Report: Underworld don Dawood Ibrahim funded Zakir Naik’s NGO

Dawood Ibrahim’s brother admits to police that his fugitive brother had funded Naik’s Islamic Research Foundation.

KUALA LUMPUR: The brother of India’s notorious gangster Dawood Ibrahim has revealed that Dawood Ibrahim had helped fund controversial preacher Zakir Naik’s Islamic Research Foundation.

According to The Siasat Daily, Iqbal Kaskar admitted to police on Tuesday that the underworld don used to fund the IRF.

The report said Naik’s chief financial officer, Aamir Gazdar, too, had said that Dawood had funded the IRF.

Dawood Ibrahim fled India several years ago and is living in Pakistan. The money to IRF is said to have been sent via Pakistan.

Naik, who fled India after police opened investigations into alleged money laundering and terrorism-related offences.

The Siasat Daily said Iqbal Kaskar had been arrested on charges of extorting money from property developers for Dawood Ibrahim.

Meanwhile, The Asian Age reported that India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) had registered a case against Iqbal Kaskar and two of his associates for allegedly laundering extortion money abroad.

Part of this money, the report said, was believed to have been rerouted to India as donation to Naik’s IRF.

It quoted an unnamed senior ED official as saying that they were probing the link between the money sent out of India and donations to IRF.

Sources in the ED told The Asian Age the properties allegedly extorted by Iqbal Kaskar and his associates were later sold and the money made out of such transactions, along with cash extortions, were sent to Dawood Ibrahim in Pakistan and Iqbal Kaskar’s family in Dubai. -FMT