India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) “had also told the Bombay High Court that there were indications that Ali was part of a strong international crime syndicate with money flowing in from ‘proceeds of heinous crimes like terrorism, arms trade, gun running, corruption and organized forgery’.”
A series of news reports from March 2007 in the Times of India revealed that Khan was being investigated for money laundering and other illicit activities. A laptop recovered from his home showed that he had accounts at a Swiss bank. Khan had reportedly tried to take advantage of tax waivers granted on investments originating outside India in countries with double taxation avoidance agreements with India. The funds were also be used to invest in the stock market.
Khan would send funds abroad through illegal channels and re-route them into India through shell companies in countries with such a tax arrangement with India. According to the Times of India, “Khan has no known sources of income in India but owns stud farms and often travels abroad.” His wealth is estimated to be in the billions, and he owns property in Mumbai and Pune.
Investigators from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) “had crucial input from the Intelligence Bureau, which was concerned about this unaccounted money having implications for national security.”
One of the countries used to route money back into India was Mauritius, an island chain off the east coast of Africa near Madagascar and a former British colony. The UK still maintains a military presence there. It expelled the inhabitants of the island of Diego Garcia in order to turn it into a military base, which has also been used by the US for its own military operations.
According to reports, prior to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, a team had been sent ahead and checked into the Taj Mahal hotel, one of the key targets of the attacks, and established a control room where they had food, weapons, and other supplies waiting in anticipation of the siege of the hotel by police and special forces. An identification card from Mauritius was used to check into the room.
Hassan Ali Khan has an interest in horse-racing and trades in thoroughbreds. The Times of India reported that “he had attracted attention on the Pune racing turf where he surfaced about five years ago as a small-time punter who suddenly became one of the biggest players. His contacts, by default, were with some of the top industrialists who have an interest in horse-trading.”
Last February, the Hindustan Times reported that the Swiss bank involved in the money transfers, USB (United Bank of Switzerland) AG, was reluctant to assist Indian investigators, and the investigation had been stalled as a result. The ED had advised the Indian government not to approve a plan by UBS AG to buy Standard Chartered Bank, an Indian mutual fund business, because of its lack of cooperation in tracking Khan’s money transfers. According to the ED, Khan had $8 billion in the bank’s accounts.
Adnan Khashoggi
The Hindustan Times also revealed that there was evidence that Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi of Iran-Contra infamy had transferred $300 million to Khan from a Chase Manhattan bank account in New York. It added that Khashoggi’s “arms supplies to Tamil terrorists, the LTTE, were revealed during an investigation into the 1991 assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.”
Khashoggi acted as a middle-man during the Iran-Contra affair, brokering an arrangement for Israel to sell US arms from its own stockpiles to Iran. The CIA then channeled money from the sales to the Contras in support of their terrorist war against the democratically-elected government of Nicaragua. The World Court later condemned the United States for the “unlawful use of force” – a euphemism for international terrorism or the even greater crime of a war of aggression.
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen recently reported that, according to Asian intelligence sources, Khashoggi was also involved with the CIA in an effort to support Bosnian Muslims that “brought [Dawood] Ibrahim and [Osama] Bin Laden into the same big CIA tent, along with Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, a key Iran-contra figure in George H. W. Bush’s global arms smuggling venture while he served as Vice President under Ronald Reagan. There have been reports that Ibrahim considers Khashoggi to be a hero figure.”
In 1991, a Defense Intelligence Agency report listed Khashoggi as “An international arms trafficker who allegedly has sold arms to the Colombian drug traffickers, especially to the Medellin Cartel.”
The Global Drug Trade
The DIA report also listed Washington’s man in Columbia, Alvaro Uribe Velez, as “A Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medillin Cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the US…. Uribe has worked for the Medillin Cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria.”
Uribe is now the President of Colombia, which receives enormous amounts of US financing and military support, surpassed perhaps only by US support for Israel, Egypt, and now Iraq.
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