The head of a District-based international money-laundering organization has been sentenced to nearly two years in prison after he admitted to handling $2.2 million he believed was linked to al Qaeda and drug traffickers.
Between October 2003 and September 2007, a witness cooperating with federal authorities told Saifullah Ranjha that the money Ranjha was laundering on the witness’ behalf was linked to al Qaeda and drugs. On March 27, Ranjha was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
The witness was operating under the guise that he ran an import/export business under the name Afridi Export, court documents said. The company was fake and the witness was following the direction of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the FBI.
According to court documents, Ranjha used his company Hamza Inc. to run an international money-laundering network composed of people and businesses who transferred cash without relying on a conventional banking system. Members of the network lived in Canada, Spain and Belgium, court documents said. When the members had to use banks, deposits were kept below $10,000 in an effort to avoid detection by law enforcement.
In February 2006, Ranjha and the witness met for the first time in Madrid, Ranjha admitted. By then the witness had already met with one of Ranjha’s co-conspirators in Laurel, where the witness passed the co-conspirator $150,000 to be laundered by Ranjha.
While meeting in Madrid, the witness told Ranjha that he was having problems transporting money after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, court documents said. “You tell me to bring heroin or hashish, it’s no problem for me. I will bring it. … But money … ” the witness reportedly told Ranjha. To that Ranjha laughed and assured the witness he would take the money, Ranjha admitted.
For more than a year following the Madrid meeting, the witness and Ranjha continued to meet and exchange money. Ranjha collected a 5 percent fee on the $2.2 million the witness passed him during that time. The money, the witness told Ranjha, came from drug trafficking, the international trafficking of contraband cigarettes and to provide assistance to members of al Qaeda, Ranjha admitted.
