Five Pakistanis have been arrested over illegal cash transfers worth millions of dollars, including payments from Afghanistan's Taliban for materials for heroin production, South Korean police said on Thursday.The five were accused of operating two 'hawala' money transfer networks in South Korea since 2005, police said, adding that 53 other hawala brokers including Koreans have been charged but not detained. 'Hawala,' is a paperless system that is used in some Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries but is illegal in South Korea.
Police say the informal hawala networks, widely used in the Middle East, provide a fast and convenient way to transfer money both for illegal foreign workers and terrorists. "They have set up phoney firms or acted as traders here to cover up their underground operations," investigator Kim Ki-Hun said. The total sum illegally transferred by the two networks is about $100 billion won ($75 million), including $50,000 sent by the Taliban, he said.
"In co-operation with Interpol, we have been hunting for 140 others believed to be involved in the networks," Kim said. He said the hunt began in July when nine people including one Afghan and two Pakistanis were arrested in South Korea for allegedly trying to smuggle tonnes of chemicals for heroin production to the Taliban.
Police confiscated 12 tonnes of acetic anhydride destined for Afghanistan. The chemical is heated along with morphine, an opium derivative, to make heroin. At that time police said about 50 tonnes of the chemical had already been shipped to Afghanistan between April last year and March this year. It was labelled as disinfectant.
The suspects had money transferred from accounts linked to hawala networks, and they acknowledged they had received orders from the Taliban, police said.
The investigation started in March after Interpol discovered 14 tonnes of acetic anhydride, which had been shipped from Korea in the southern Pakistani port of Karachi.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says Afghanistan produced 8,200 tonnes of opium base last year, 92 percent of the worldwide total. The report also noted that 80 percent of the output came from five southern provinces where the Taliban profit from drug trafficking.
South Korea is a relatively drug-free nation, with just 7,709 people arrested in 2006 for drug offences. But officials say it is becoming a more popular international transit point for cocaine and 'ice'.