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Pirated film CDs, key source of income for terrorists: Report

Rackets of pirated movies, which include key players like terror mastermind Dawood Ibrahim, are the main source of income for terrorists across the world.

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Rackets of pirated movies, which include key players like terror mastermind Dawood Ibrahim, are the main source of income for terrorists across the world, a leading US think tank has said.

Elusive Dawood is among the top-ranking in this highly profitable business in the South Asia region, says California-based RAND Corporation in its latest report "Film Piracy, Organised Crime and Terrorism".

The report said that Dawood-led D-Company appears to have morphed from a traditional criminal syndicate motivated by money to a terrorist group motivated by a political agenda and have used film piracy to help fund their activities.

"Dawood is India's godfather of godfathers who runs criminal gangs from Bangkok to Dubai. Ibrahim's gang syndicate, called D-Company, engages in strong-arm protection, drug trafficking, extortion and murder-for-hire," it said.

While crime syndicates have added piracy to criminal portfolios that include drugs, money laundering, extortion and human smuggling, the profits from film piracy also have been used on occasion to support the activities of terrorist groups, says the researchers.

Given the mind boggling money that is being spinned out of pirated movie DVDs and CDs, it said film piracy can be even more profitable than drug trafficking or other enterprises commonly linked to organised crime.

In one example cited in the report, a pirated DVD made in Malaysia for 70 cents was marked up more than 1,000 per cent and sold in London for about nine US Dollars.

"The profit margin was more than three times higher than the markup for Iranian heroin and higher than the profit for
Columbian cocaine," the report said.

Identifying Al-Mansoor and SADAF brands as belonging to Dawood, the report said he acquired extraordinary market power in the distribution of pirated films throughout the region.

It said D-Company gained control of the SADAF Trading Company based in Karachi, which allowed the gang to better organise distribution in Pakistan and more important, acquire the infrastructure to manufacture pirate VHS tapes and VCDs for sale across the world.

RAND Corporation says D-Company demonstrates the blurring line between crime and terror around the globe. His gang which started as a standard crime-syndicate engaged in extortion, smuggling and contract killings entered in piracy of Indian Films industry in 1980s, the report said.

"... Ibrahim and his cohorts have been able to vertically integrate D-company throughout the Indian film and piracy industry, forging a clear pirate monopoly over competitors and launching a racket to control the master copies of pirated Bollywood and Hollywood films," the report said.

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