Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Tuesday said that stock markets have emerged as a new mode for terrorists to route their illicit money into the country's economy and leverage it to carry out their nefarious design.
"It is a cliche to say that terror-funding is the lifeblood of terrorism. Credible intelligence suggests that terrorist outfits are investing in stock markets through spurious companies, setting up fictitious businesses and laundering money," the minister said, addressing the Interpol General Assembly here.
Shinde said the utmost important task was to detect the sources of such finance, including the fake currency variant, its conduits, modus-operandi and stanching its flow. "Here again the Interpol has to play a very crucial role," he said.
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Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde speaking at the INTERPOL General Assembly in Rome.u00a0
In September, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India had said as many as 35 stock brokers have been probed by it for possible lapses in controls related to money laundering and terror financing. The inspections by the SEBI follow actions taken by stock exchanges and depositories against more than 300 market entities for violations and discrepancies related to Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism (AML and CFT) regulations in the 2011-12 fiscal.
Last year, tyhe Indian government had told the Parliament that it received information on 10 suspected instances of terrorist financing using the stock exchanges between 2009-11. The Financial Intelligence Unit had received five Suspicious Transaction Reports during the 2009-10, four during 2010-11 and one case till November 2011.
The STRs, suspected to be linked to terrorist financing, have been received from intermediaries of stock market such as stockbrokers, asset management companies, etc, and disseminated to intelligence agencies by the FIU. u00a0
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