The Statesman: Terrorism funding shadows BCCI’s push for Pak series
That Indian cricket fans should be paying for terrorist attacks against India looms as one of the most strangely ignored or forgotten aspects in the ongoing hectic and covert efforts from the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) to resume cricketing ties with Pakistan.
The proposed series was supposedly to take place in December, a few days after the seventh anniversary of the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai. It does not seem to matter for the BCCI that the perpetrators continue receiving state protection in Pakistan.
Neither does it seem to matter for BCCI boss Shashank Manohar that the Indian government has often accused Pakistan of being a state sponsor of terrorism. Whether terrorists strike in Mumbai or Paris, lives lost in terrorist attacks are merely ‘politics’ apparently for Manohar; and cricket, or more accurately the money earned from it, is the more important thing in the world for the BCCI.
But the deadly problem is with this cricket money churning dirty money. It’s long known and publicized in international media that illegal cricket betting, if not match fixing, hits highs of hundreds of millions of dollars in any India versus Pakistan cricket match anywhere in the world. Large chunks of this cricket betting loot falls into hands of criminal syndicates such as those headed by Interpol-wanted crime boss Dawood Ibrahim, according to reports in public domain.
Media reports on November 16 revealed BCCI chief Manohar’s ‘closed door’ dealings with Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) counterpart Shahriyar Khan, with the BCCI hoping to make a few hundred more crore rupees in the most profitable bilateral series in the cricketing world.
Even as Shahriyar Khan of PCB uses a peculiar mixture of bluster, threats, protests and pleas in his desperate push for a lucrative cricket series versus India in December, the lethal aspect of sub-continental cricketing links to terrorist funding has been remarkably sidelined in both countries.
Terrorists cast a more sinister shadow than the general reckoning of bilateral ties having crashed due to Pakistan shielding those involved in the 26th November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The nexus between South Asian cricket betting mafias and terrorist groups have been exposed alongside betting scandals, such as the 2010 criminal conviction and prison sentences against former Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt, his team mates Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir.
Dawood Ibrahim, accused as masterminding the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, has top level cricket links in Pakistan. His daughter Mahrukh is married to Junaid Miandad, son of former Pakistan cricket captain and ex PCB director general Javed Miandad. Ibrahim and his criminal syndicate ‘D Company’ have been subjected to US sanctions since 16 January 2005.
“The United States is targeting D Company, a violent organization notorious for its drug trafficking activities and terrorism,” announced Adam J. Szubin, Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Combating transnational organized crime is a top U.S. priority, and we will continue to expose the activities of D Company and the underpinnings of criminal financial networks worldwide.”
This alleged Dawood network in sub-continental cricket compelled my accurate guess that soon after the election of its new president, the BCCI would change its recent unusually firm stance against resuming cricketing ties against Pakistan until it gives up sponsoring terrorism. A certain BCCI boss has close ties to a particular politician whose ‘links’ need to be put under close scrutiny by the government of India and security agencies.
Sure enough, the new BCCI president promptly invited PCB boss Shahryar Khan to Mumbai for ‘talks’. Media reports on November 16 revealed that Shashank Manohar had asked in a ‘closed door’ process if the PCB is willing to play in India. Terrorist groups receiving a share of thousands of crores of illegal cricket betting money will be wishing him all success.
A day earlier on November 15, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the BRICs meeting in Turkey of the urgent global need to cut off funding for terrorists. This focus should include the BCCI. Money laundering, crime syndicates, over US$ 500 million in illegal cricket betting, terrorism all find a common meeting point in Dawood Ibrahim’s ‘D Company’ and his known keen interest in cricket.
In July earlier this year, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by India’s Supreme Court to probe money laundering also urged the government to formulate laws against cricket betting.
“Involvement of huge illegal, unaccounted money in cricket betting has been noticed by the Enforcement Directorate, where betting is being done over the Internet or using electronic gadgets,” the SIT report said.
Even without illegal cricket betting, big money rules any India versus Pakistan cricket series – with huge stakes for the BCCI, PCB, official broadcasters, media companies and cricket websites that earn millions from premium advertising rates.
Not surprisingly, sections of the Indian media propagate this remarkable myth that a cricket series is somehow going to inspire terrorists to give up their murderous hatred for fellow humans, and a terrorism sponsoring country to stop hosting terrorist training camps.
On the contrary, the only evidence we have seen so far is that any cricket series with Pakistan that sends out the ‘normalization’ signal only leads to the next terrorist attack in India.
Business as usual with Pakistan seems bizarre and contradictory after only this September, in response to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s speech at the United Nations, India’s UN representative Abhishek Singh called Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism: “The heart of the matter is a state that regards the use of terrorism as a legitimate instrument of statecraft. The world watches with concern as its consequences have spread beyond its immediate neighborhood.”
Amid such concerns, faking normalcy with cultural and sporting ties has not stopped cross-border terrorist attacks, or even cross-border firing from Pakistan that terrorizes thousands of Indian villagers near the border. We shrug our shoulders at all these lives lost and play cricket with the country behind the perpetual outrages? Should the French government organize football matches with the ISIS as part of a ‘peace process’? Insincerity obviously renders meaningless attempts at honest dialogue needed between India and Pakistan to resolve disputes. For this, it needs to be made clear that the responsibility for genuinely meaningful peace talks rests completely with Pakistan - after that country shuts down terrorist camps within its borders.
PCB chief Shahriyar himself saw reality a year ago in September 2014, when he admitted to the media in Karachi, “as far as its repercussions on bilateral (cricket) series is concerned I think these ties will remain affected until there is a closure of the Mumbai attack case in Pakistan.”
Without this closure as a basic for sincere dialogue – starting with shutting down Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist camps - a cricket series between Indian and Pakistan is engineered more by lure of multi-million dollar profits serving vested interests both sides of the border.
An India-Pakistan cricket series may not please families of dead victims of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, but it definitely promises a few hundred more crores of rupees to this greedy multi-billion dollar, non-transparent commercial enterprise called the BCCI, a desperately-funds starved Pakistan Cricket Board, terrorist financiers and a certain Dawood Ibrahim’s money launderers.
The writer is a senior, Mumbai-based journalist.
That Indian cricket fans should be paying for terrorist attacks against India looms as one of the most strangely ignored or forgotten aspects in the ongoing hectic and covert efforts from the Board of Control for Cricket (BCCI) to resume cricketing ties with Pakistan.
The proposed series was supposedly to take place in December, a few days after the seventh anniversary of the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai. It does not seem to matter for the BCCI that the perpetrators continue receiving state protection in Pakistan.
Neither does it seem to matter for BCCI boss Shashank Manohar that the Indian government has often accused Pakistan of being a state sponsor of terrorism. Whether terrorists strike in Mumbai or Paris, lives lost in terrorist attacks are merely ‘politics’ apparently for Manohar; and cricket, or more accurately the money earned from it, is the more important thing in the world for the BCCI.
But the deadly problem is with this cricket money churning dirty money. It’s long known and publicized in international media that illegal cricket betting, if not match fixing, hits highs of hundreds of millions of dollars in any India versus Pakistan cricket match anywhere in the world. Large chunks of this cricket betting loot falls into hands of criminal syndicates such as those headed by Interpol-wanted crime boss Dawood Ibrahim, according to reports in public domain.
Media reports on November 16 revealed BCCI chief Manohar’s ‘closed door’ dealings with Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) counterpart Shahriyar Khan, with the BCCI hoping to make a few hundred more crore rupees in the most profitable bilateral series in the cricketing world.
Even as Shahriyar Khan of PCB uses a peculiar mixture of bluster, threats, protests and pleas in his desperate push for a lucrative cricket series versus India in December, the lethal aspect of sub-continental cricketing links to terrorist funding has been remarkably sidelined in both countries.
Terrorists cast a more sinister shadow than the general reckoning of bilateral ties having crashed due to Pakistan shielding those involved in the 26th November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The nexus between South Asian cricket betting mafias and terrorist groups have been exposed alongside betting scandals, such as the 2010 criminal conviction and prison sentences against former Pakistan cricket captain Salman Butt, his team mates Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir.
Dawood Ibrahim, accused as masterminding the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, has top level cricket links in Pakistan. His daughter Mahrukh is married to Junaid Miandad, son of former Pakistan cricket captain and ex PCB director general Javed Miandad. Ibrahim and his criminal syndicate ‘D Company’ have been subjected to US sanctions since 16 January 2005.
“The United States is targeting D Company, a violent organization notorious for its drug trafficking activities and terrorism,” announced Adam J. Szubin, Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Combating transnational organized crime is a top U.S. priority, and we will continue to expose the activities of D Company and the underpinnings of criminal financial networks worldwide.”
This alleged Dawood network in sub-continental cricket compelled my accurate guess that soon after the election of its new president, the BCCI would change its recent unusually firm stance against resuming cricketing ties against Pakistan until it gives up sponsoring terrorism. A certain BCCI boss has close ties to a particular politician whose ‘links’ need to be put under close scrutiny by the government of India and security agencies.
Sure enough, the new BCCI president promptly invited PCB boss Shahryar Khan to Mumbai for ‘talks’. Media reports on November 16 revealed that Shashank Manohar had asked in a ‘closed door’ process if the PCB is willing to play in India. Terrorist groups receiving a share of thousands of crores of illegal cricket betting money will be wishing him all success.
A day earlier on November 15, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the BRICs meeting in Turkey of the urgent global need to cut off funding for terrorists. This focus should include the BCCI. Money laundering, crime syndicates, over US$ 500 million in illegal cricket betting, terrorism all find a common meeting point in Dawood Ibrahim’s ‘D Company’ and his known keen interest in cricket.
In July earlier this year, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by India’s Supreme Court to probe money laundering also urged the government to formulate laws against cricket betting.
“Involvement of huge illegal, unaccounted money in cricket betting has been noticed by the Enforcement Directorate, where betting is being done over the Internet or using electronic gadgets,” the SIT report said.
Even without illegal cricket betting, big money rules any India versus Pakistan cricket series – with huge stakes for the BCCI, PCB, official broadcasters, media companies and cricket websites that earn millions from premium advertising rates.
Not surprisingly, sections of the Indian media propagate this remarkable myth that a cricket series is somehow going to inspire terrorists to give up their murderous hatred for fellow humans, and a terrorism sponsoring country to stop hosting terrorist training camps.
On the contrary, the only evidence we have seen so far is that any cricket series with Pakistan that sends out the ‘normalization’ signal only leads to the next terrorist attack in India.
Business as usual with Pakistan seems bizarre and contradictory after only this September, in response to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s speech at the United Nations, India’s UN representative Abhishek Singh called Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism: “The heart of the matter is a state that regards the use of terrorism as a legitimate instrument of statecraft. The world watches with concern as its consequences have spread beyond its immediate neighborhood.”
Amid such concerns, faking normalcy with cultural and sporting ties has not stopped cross-border terrorist attacks, or even cross-border firing from Pakistan that terrorizes thousands of Indian villagers near the border. We shrug our shoulders at all these lives lost and play cricket with the country behind the perpetual outrages? Should the French government organize football matches with the ISIS as part of a ‘peace process’? Insincerity obviously renders meaningless attempts at honest dialogue needed between India and Pakistan to resolve disputes. For this, it needs to be made clear that the responsibility for genuinely meaningful peace talks rests completely with Pakistan - after that country shuts down terrorist camps within its borders.
PCB chief Shahriyar himself saw reality a year ago in September 2014, when he admitted to the media in Karachi, “as far as its repercussions on bilateral (cricket) series is concerned I think these ties will remain affected until there is a closure of the Mumbai attack case in Pakistan.”
Without this closure as a basic for sincere dialogue – starting with shutting down Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist camps - a cricket series between Indian and Pakistan is engineered more by lure of multi-million dollar profits serving vested interests both sides of the border.
An India-Pakistan cricket series may not please families of dead victims of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, but it definitely promises a few hundred more crores of rupees to this greedy multi-billion dollar, non-transparent commercial enterprise called the BCCI, a desperately-funds starved Pakistan Cricket Board, terrorist financiers and a certain Dawood Ibrahim’s money launderers.
The writer is a senior, Mumbai-based journalist.
