Islamabad: Oct 20: Before going into the details how dollar mafia operates its necessary to understand who the dollar mafia is.
There are three forms of dollar mafia. I) The banks. The banks are really operating like a mafia in Pakistan. All commercial banks have made unprecedented profits in hard times of Pakistan. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), which is a so called regulator or currency market, is functioning as a facilitator of the banking mafia. 2) Currency dealers. This is an extremely deadly mafia. It buys and sells dollar and other major currencies. This mafia has no real time reporting system. It deposits dollar with SBP when it foresees some drop in dollar price in the market, but it holds purchased dollar back indefinitely when it judges some increase in dollar value. This mafia also operates under SBP. One can say without any prejudice that SBP is mother of the first two types of dollar mafias. 3). General public. Pakistan has witnessed a strange public mafia. Every Tom and Jerry who has some saving is buying and selling dollar in this country. This mafia is widespread and , according to Pakistan’s top spy agency , this mafia of course led by filthy rich has hoarded $ 22 billion at homes , in lockers and in personal lockers .
Recovery of billions of rupees and huge quantity of dollars and other foreign currencies from private lockers of a Rawalpindi based land grabber some one month ago is its typical example.
These three mafias operate in cohesion. They work closely with each other to buy and sell dollars out of the system.
These all three mafias are actively engaged in dollar smuggling , ‘Hundi and Hawala’ . These mafias have hurt Pakistan beyond repair. This filthy business flourished with the policy of the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) government of restricting letter of credits (LCs) in its 16 months rule. That government and its economic hitman (Mr Dar) damaged Pakistan’s economy by introducing ban on LCs. The businessmen , industrialists and even commoners switched over to ‘Hawala’ and ‘Hundi’ to dodge LCs ban. The ban on LCs hurt Pakistan more than any thing. It gave birth a unmanageable black market of dollar .
With bowing out of PDM government , the Law Enforcing Agencies (LEAs) sprange up
for a countrywide operation against dollar and gold smuggling . Seeing the push of the crackdown , dollar mafia slowed down its activity, but it has resurged again. It has even ignored a warning issued just two weeks ago by Pakistan’s powerful circles.
