this story originally appeared in on feb 20 2017mumbai was the controversial preacher a part of the hawala racket being masterminded from karachisecurity agencies monitoring karachibased businessmen close to dcompany and a terror outfit masquerading as charitable and social organisation for funding mumbaibased irfthree days after controversial preacher zakir naiks chief financial officer aamir gazdar was arrested by the enforcement directorate ed for alleged money laundering the trail has led the sleuths to pakistan and the dcompany in what could turn out to be a massive hawala racket in india the ed is probing a few businessmen in karachi known to be close to dawood who have purportedly moved large amounts of money into naiks islamic research foundation irf accountsdespite repeated attempts naik and the irf officials remained unavailable for comment even as the ed officials said a spate of offshore money transactions from pakistan and also dubai was overseen by gazdar and that there was a definite attempt to hide the sources of fundinga closely coordinated investigation is on to conclusively find out whether linked with a pakistanbased terror outfit masquerading as social workers organisation and businessmen close to dawood ibrahim have moved funds to naiks ngo a highranking ed official said money the official said was also illegally routed to the irf from saudi arabia uk and a few smaller african countriesofficers from both the ed and the intelligence bureau ib said a hawala dealer from pakistanoccupied kashmir identified as sultan ahmed acted as an intermediary sultan ahmed met with zakir naik in dubai in 2012 and since then naik started receiving funding from several sources in the uk and a few african countries there is a strong suspicion that some people connected to the dcompany have been routing this money into his ngo an ib source saida senior ib officer said conclusive details are yet to emerge from the probe but naik appears to have contacts and financial interests in pakistan the probe is open at this stage he saidinterrogation of gazdar a marble contractor who doubled up as real estate agent revealed multiple layers of fund placements after the money was routed to the irf the ed sources saidgazdar according to the ed created several dummy companies to hide the sources of money accessed by the irf he was the director of at least six companies four of them based in india and two abroad one such company helped in editing and airing naiks speeches ed lawyer hiten venegavkar saidnaiks ties with several influential people in saudi arabia has also been under the internal security scanner for some time now the irfs publicity material was being printed by the darussalam publications in riyadh an ib source saidread this story in marathi