Neo Terror financing

This blog is in reference to the Sept 3, 2006 edition of The Week. The magazine carried out a truly eyeopening article about how terror networks find finance.

The newest way to finance terrorist activities seems to be video piracy. This business has one of the highest payoffs you can get. Making a pirated CD costs Rs 5. But it sells for Rs 30 in the streets. 600% profits...Even tech stocks during 1999-2000 didn't offer those kind of returns.

The modus operandi is simple - The bad guys lay their hands on an original CD when the movies are released outside India. Copies are made in neighbouring countries, and smuggled back into India. The revenues ultimately gets funnelled into Al-Qaeda, IRA, Chechen rebels.....you name it.

A few figures for your eyes - An average seller makes around Rs. 2.4 lakh a month, and at any given time every major city in India has about 50 such sellers. You can do the math yourself. Chechen rebels make about USD 700,000 per year. IRA nets about USD 167 million a year and get this.....the Al-Qaeda gets about USD 500 million a year.

The sheer magnitude of these numbers staggered me. I mean these figures are well above or on par with the annual revenues of any small/medium business in India.

These are hard figures people, no more subjectivity. Its now upto each one of us to draw our own conclusions from these facts. As for me, I am not buying pirated video CDs anymore.