Abolfazl Bahauddini, representative of Ali Khamenei in Pakistan
A report has revealed a money laundering network in Pakistan transferred huge amounts of illicit funds to Iran, with Supreme Leader’s representative as one of the recipients.
Saudi website Arab News said in a report on Saturday that court documents recently submitted by Pakistani federal investigators show that members of the network operated between Pakistan, Iran and Iraq over the past seven years.
According to Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency, the group Shiite used pilgrims traveling to the cities of Najaf in Iraq and Qom in Iran to smuggle money, as well as hawala and hundi -- two informal ways of transferring cash across borders, which are illegal in Pakistan.
One of the people who received money from the main suspect in the case, identified as Ali Raza, was Abolfazl Bahauddini, Ali Khamenei’s former representative in Pakistan.
Raza was among 13 people arrested by police in Karachi in December 2020 and January 2021 on charges of money laundering and being “associated with a foreign intelligence agency”. They were members of an Iran-backed militant group, the Zainabiyoun Brigade, which is believed to have sent young members of the Pakistani Shiite community to fight in Syria.
The charges said Raza was giving an amount of $200,000 monthly to Bahauddini through his representative Syed Wisal Haider Naqvi -- a government official, but it did not specify for how long Bahauddini had received the monthly payments.