Dawood's illegal activities posing real threats: India

Pakistan-based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's criminal syndicate has mutated into a terrorist network, India has said, as it sought the US Security Council's "focussed attention" to address the real threats posed by the D-Company, the JeM and the LeT.

Terrorist organisations are increasingly involved in lucrative criminal activities such as trading in natural resources and human trafficking to raise funds, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said on Tuesday.

Similarly, criminal groups are joining hands with terrorists and are providing services such as counterfeiting, illicit financing, arms dealing, drug trafficking and smuggling terrorists across borders, he said at the Security Council debate on 'Threats to International Peace and Security: Linkages between International Terrorism and Organised Crime'.

"In our own region, we have seen the mutation of Dawood Ibrahim's criminal syndicate into a terrorist network known as the D-Company.

"The D-Company's illegitimate economic activities may be little known outside our region, but for us, such activities as gold smuggling, counterfeit currency, as well as arms and drug trafficking from a safe haven that declines to acknowledge even his existence, are a real and present danger," Akbaruddin said.

He emphasised that the success of a collective action to "denude" the IS is a pointer that the Council's "focussed attention can and does yield results".

Pakistan's Foreign Office last week said "Dawood Ibrahim is not in Pakistan", a day after a UK court was informed that the underworld don wanted for the deadly coordinated bombings in Mumbai in 1993 is currently in exile in the country.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar has said that Pakistan's stand that Dawood was not present in the country exposed its "double standards".

Akbaruddin stressed that terrorism and organised crime are both "manifestly malicious organisms, drawing sustenance from the same deadly swamp.

"At times, they co-exist; at other times, they cooperate; and in instances, they converge. As the world becomes more interconnected, these menacing networks are becoming increasingly intertwined," he said.

Terrorist and criminal groups rely on strategic recourse to unsanctioned and illegitimate use of violence to undermine governance and development, he told the UNSC.

"Both lead to destabilising established state structures, thereby undermining and threatening international peace and security," he said, adding that revenues generated by illicit activities of terrorist and criminal groups are moved across borders and exchanged through open networks.

Akbaruddin also called for normative efforts at the UN to be coordinated through collaboration with other for a like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).