Hawala kingpin Naresh Jain booked by ED

Alleged Hawala kingpin Naresh Kumar Jain, arrested by the the Narcotics Control Bureau, was booked on Tuesday under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act by the Enforcement Directorate. The Directorate, which had in September booked Jain under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, is likely to seek his remand soon. He had been evading the summons issued by the ED, official sources said.

Jain, alleged to have laundered money for global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim and financed narcotic cells, was arrested on Sunday from Delhi and is currently under NCB custody. He was also arrested in Dubai two years back following a sting operation by American and European security agencies but managed to jump bail. Sources said Jain is understood to have told interrogators at NCB about his alleged involvement with international drug cartels.

They added that he has given statement under Section 27 (A) and 24 of the NDPS Act, which is admissible in court. Though the ED had wanted to book Jain under PMLA much earlier, they had to substantiate it by showing that he had committed a scheduled offence under the law, the sources said. Since, he has been booked by the NCB for funding narcotic cartels, the Bureau's case became the ground on which ED has booked him under the PMLA.

The ED described Jain as the "undisputed hawala king" who is alleged to have an illegal payment network of over Rs 5,000 crore. The Directorate, during its searches at various premises of Jain in September, had claimed to have recovered Rs 60 lakh in cash that was unaccounted and foreign currency worth a little over Rs three lakh besides papers showing transactions of several crores of rupees with different Pakistan and Afghanistan based persons.

His operations are believed to be spread over Nigeria, Italy, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Bolivia and Congo among many other countries. Jain is accused of using certain companies and accounts in New York for depositing proceeds of crime (drug money) and transferring the funds to drug barons in locations such as Turkey. He is also reported to own a copper mine in Congo and had first come under scanner in 2006 through "Operation Khyber Pass", a sting operation conducted by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and SOCA.