Ahmedabad: 10th accused arrested in crypto-terror funding case

Ahmedabad: The CID Crime’s Cyber Centre of Excellence on Saturday arrested another accused in the Rs 226-crore cryptocurrency laundering and terror-funding case that allegedly has links to Hamas and international drug syndicates. Officials said the latest arrest takes the total number of accused held in the case to 10.

The arrested accused, identified as 25-year-old Ghulam Ali Qureshi, a resident of the Mirzapur area of the city involved in mobile phone trading, was nabbed after remaining on the run for nearly two years and allegedly hiding in Rajasthan’s Udaipur. Investigators claimed he played a key role in converting “dirty crypto” into cash through peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions and mule bank accounts.

According to CID Crime officials, the accused had travelled to Dubai to learn USDT trading operations and later conducted transactions worth nearly Rs 10 crore to Rs 15 crore using a Binance wallet allegedly operated in his father’s name. Police claimed the accused was directly linked to wallets that had received funds from entities flagged by Israel’s National Bureau for Counter Terror Financing (NBCTF).

The probe into the network began after investigators tracked transactions linked to a dark web narcotics platform. Technical analysis of multiple crypto wallets allegedly revealed connections with global terror-financing and money laundering networks. Officials claimed some wallets were linked to entities sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), including Yemen’s Houthi group, Iran’s IRGC-QF and Russia-based crypto exchange Garantex.

Police said the accused allegedly received around Rs 43 lakh through layered crypto transactions linked to the network. Investigators also found that nearly 60 bank accounts used for converting cryptocurrency into cash were frozen during the probe.

CID Crime officials said the network allegedly used anonymous cryptocurrencies such as Monero to hide financial trails linked to narcotics trade, cyberfraud and suspected terror financing.