Thursday, November 7

World’s most wanted gangster UK’s property frozen


 

 

British property belonging to one of the world’s most wanted gangsters and second richest criminal ever after Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has been frozen.

Kaskar Dawood Ibrahim, 61, an Indian national, who goes by 21 aliases, is estimated to be worth $6.7 billion (£5.05 billion) while rewards totalling $25m are on offer for his capture, according to Forbes business magazine.

He owns a hotel in Warwickshire and other residential properties across the Midlands.

The shadowy son of a Mumbai policeman is accused of heading a global crime empire called D Company, spanning 16 countries across five continents.

The Indian government claim he has ties to Al Qaeda and blame him for a series of bombings in Mumbai in 1993 and for planning the Mumbai massacre in 2009, the Birmingham Mail reports.

Ibrahim, known as The Don, appears on the latest UK Treasury department’s Consolidated List of Financial Sanctions Targets, updated last month.

The Treasury sanction document lists three recorded addresses for Ibrahim in Pakistan including one sprawling property called The White House near the Saudi mosque in the seaside suburb of Clifton in Karachi Pakistan.

The UK also lists 21 aliases for Ibrahim including Abdul, Shaikh, Ismail; Abdul Aziz, Abdul Hamid; Abdul Rehman, Shaikh, Mohd, Ismail; Anis, Ibrahim, Shaikh, Mohd; Bhai, Bada; Bhai, Dawood; Bhai, Iqbal; Dilip, Aziz; Ebrahim, Dawood; Farooqi, Sheikh; Hasan, Kaskar, Dawood; Hassan, Dawood; Ibrahim, Anis; Ibrahim, Dowood, Hassan, Shaikh; Kaskar, Daud, Hasan, Shaikh, Ibrahim; Kaskar, Daud, Ibrahim, Memon; Kaskar, Dawood, Hasan, Ibrahim; Memon, Dawood, Ibrahim; Sabri, Dawood; Sahab, Haji; and Seth, Bada.

In 2015 Indian investigators visited the Midlands to identify and seize the underworld kingpin’s UK assets.

His Midlands properties were on the radar of a team of four officers from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Indian’s economic intelligence agency.

At the time an Indian government source, who did not want to be identified, said: “Most of Ibrahim’s money, up to half a billion dollars, is tied up in investments in the UK, and then Dubai and India.

“We have spent years trying to arrest him to no avail so now we are going after his money to put pressure on those who are protecting him.”

Related: Mumbai Auctions Gangsters Possessions (Provied by Wochit News)

He added that the ED officers will attempt to seize his UK properties which also includes a hotel in Dartford, Kent, another in Essex and several more in central London.

Ibrahim allegedly controls 70 percent of India’s $1 billion piracy market and has been accused of extorting millions of dollars from Bollywood film producers as well as funding and producing films himself.

But his main illicit business interests include terror funding, drug trafficking and counterfeiting and is reportedly behind a plan to flood India with fake bank notes.

An ardent cricket fan – in 2005 his daughter Mahrukh married Pakistan cricket legend Javed Miandad’s son Junaid – Ibrahim also runs an international betting syndicate out of Dubai and is accused of match-fixing in the lucrative Indian Premier League.

United Nations sanctions list Dawood as an associate and funder of Al Qaeda while the US Treasury Department declared him a global terrorist in 2013.

*The sanctions prohibit the transfer of funds to anyone on the list and freezes any assets they may hold in the UK. It is a criminal offence to breach a financial sanction.