Buying Pirated DVDs ? - Dawood benefits from it

A leading US non-profit research organisation partly funded by federal and state Government agencies has said the D-Company is one of three major global organized crime syndicates that channel profits from film piracy into international terrorism.

"Since the 1980s, (Dawood Ibrahim's) D-Company has been the major syndicate involved with film piracy in India," says a press note issued by the Santa Monica, California-based RAND Corporation on its report, Film Piracy, Organised Crime and Terrorism, out March 3.

"The group was transformed into a terrorist organization when it carried out the Black Friday bombings in Mumbai in 1993 that killed more than 257 people and injured hundreds more. It continues to advance a political agenda with its actions funded at least partly by the proceeds of crime."

The other two mafia groups using film piracy to fund terror, according to the note, are: the Irish Republican Army, ‘historically the best documented case’, and criminal gangs in the ‘tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay’.

The latter, says the report, is now the ‘most important financing centre for Islamic terrorism outside of the Middle East, channelling $20 million annually to Hezbollah’. At least one transfer of $3.5 million was made to Hezbollah by the DVD pirate Assad Ahmad Barakat who was declared a ‘specially designated global terrorist’ by the US in 2004.

According to the report, organised crime is getting increasingly involved in the piracy of feature films, adding to a criminal portfolio that already includes drugs, money laundering, extortion and human smuggling. The mafia, says the report, is involved in the ‘entire supply chain from manufacture to street sales of pirated movies’.

"If you buy pirated DVDs, there is a good chance that at least part of the money will go to organised crime and those proceeds fund more-dangerous criminal activities, possibly terrorism," said Greg Treverton, the report's lead author and director of the Center for Global Risk and Security at RAND.

"Given the enormous profit margins, it's no surprise that organized crime has moved into film piracy. The profits are high and penalties for being caught are relatively low," Treverton said.

According to the report, a pirated DVD made in Malaysia for 70 cents was sold on a London street for about $9, marked up over 1,000%, a profit margin more than three times that of Iranian heroin. Punishments are in inverse proportion: in France, for example, selling counterfeit products attracts two years in jail and a $190,000 fine, while selling drugs is punishable by 10 years and a fine of $9.5 million.

via Indian Express

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