India, US pledge to combat terror funding to LeT, JuD, Dawood

New Delhi, Feb 12: In a bid to choke terror funding, India and the US today pledged to jointly target financial networks and fund raising by Pakistan-based terrorist organisations like LeT and JuD, as also the D-Company of fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

The two nations vowed to work together to check illicit money transfers for terrorism, money laundering and other illegal activities. The agreement came at a meeting of the 5th Indo-US Economic and Financial Partnership dialogue, which was attended by the US Treasury Secretary Jacob J Lew and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Besides Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) and Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's Jammat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the two nations identified Jaishe-e-Mohammad, the Haqqani Network, D-Company, Al Qaida and ISIL among terror networks whose fundings have to be cut off. RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and US Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer too attended the deliberations that agreed for information sharing between two countries and cooperation on anti-money laundering and terror financing.

"We reiterated our commitment to target the financial networks and fund raising activities of terrorist organisations such as LeT, JuD, Jaishe-e-Mohammad, the Haqqani Network, D-Company, Al Qaida, ISIL, and individual terrorists associated with these organisations," said the statement.

At a joint press interaction, Lew said the two nations "share a common commitment to working together to try as much as we can to shut down the flow of funding to those who commit terrorist act and other kinds of activities".

"We discussed money laundering and funding of terrorism, since a large number of these funds come through concealed identities. This issue has been brought to out notice and the concerned authorities, including central bank, has taken appropriate action in this matter," Jaitley said.

"We welcomed the agreements made for information sharing between the two countries' regulatory agencies. We welcomed the prospect of an increasingly robust dialogue and meaningful cooperation on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism with the signing of the India-US Memorandum of Understanding in January 2015.

"We reiterated our commitment to target the financial networks and fund-raising activities of terrorist organizations... We all agreed to enhance cooperation between our agencies in fighting illicit finance in all forms," the joint statement said.

PTI