Lahore gold trader Asif Hafeez pleads guilty to drug-trafficking charges

LONDON: Lahore gold trader and Pakistani national Muhammad Asif Hafeez has pleaded guilty in the US to drug trafficking charges after he was accused in a global drugs case also implicating Bollywood star Mumta Kulkarni and her husband Vicky Goswami, a Mandrax mastermind from India who once detailed how he and his allies were hell-bent on dominating South Africa’s drug trade.

Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has confirmed that Muhammad Asif Hafeez – also called the “Sultan of Drugs”, “the big boss” and “number one in the world” by the US law enforcement - pled guilty in Manhattan federal court to conspiring to import heroin, methamphetamine, and hashish into the United States. He pled guilty before US Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron and will be sentenced by US District Judge Victor Marrero.

Originally from Lahore but based mostly in Dubai and London, Asif Hafeez was arrested in London on August 25, 2017, and extradited to the US on May 12, 2023. He was imprisoned at the Belmarsh Prison where this correspondent met him and interviewed him about his side of the complicated story. He put up a strong legal fight lasting six years but eventually his appeal at the European Court of Human Rights was also rejected and he was extradited last year to the US. He had denied all allegations and stressed he was a victim of conspiracies.

US Attorney Damian Williams said: “For more than two decades, Muhammad Asif Hafeez played a leading role in a sophisticated international drug trafficking network that was responsible for manufacturing and distributing ton quantities of dangerous narcotics to the U.S. and throughout the world. The plea ensures that one of the world’s most prolific drug traffickers will be held accountable for his crimes.”

According to the allegations contained in indictments charging Hafeez, from 2013 through the date of his London arrest in 2017, conspired with his co-defendants, Baktash Akasha Abdalla, Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, Gulam Hussein, and Vijaygiri Anandgiri Goswami to import heroin into the US. Each of these offenses carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Baktash Akasha Abdalla was the leader of an organized crime family in Kenya (the “Akasha Organization”), which was responsible for the production and distribution of ton quantities of narcotics within Kenya and throughout Africa and maintained a network used to distribute narcotics for importation into the US. For years, says the US, Hafeez served as one of the primary suppliers of narcotics to the Akasha Organization, including to Bakash Akasha Abdalla’s father, who helmed the Akasha Organization before he was murdered in the Netherlands in 2000. During this investigation, in October 2014, Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla delivered a one-kilogram heroin sample, on behalf of hafeez and the Akasha Organization, to confidential sources acting at the direction of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in Nairobi, and, in early November 2014, Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla delivered 98 additional kilograms of heroin to the confidential sources. These samples were just a small portion of the narcotics that Hafeez distributed with the Akasha Organization; indeed, during this investigation, Baktash Akasha Abdalla boasted in a recorded meeting that Hafeez had distributed “tons” of narcotics with his father and the Akasha Organization. Baktash Akasha, Ibrahim Akasha, and Goswami were arrested by Kenyan authorities in November 2014 and extradited to the US in 2017.

The US indictment also alleges that Hafeez has been involved in the drugs trade from about 1993 through 2017, allegedly conspired to import hashish and methamphetamine into the U.S. In connection with this conspiracy, Hafeez and co-conspirators transported multi-ton shipments of hashish to Europe and North America.

Between 2013 and 2016, the US says, Hafeez and certain co-conspirators also sought to establish a methamphetamine-production facility in Mozambique, which was intended to produce methamphetamine for sale in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Hafeez and his co-conspirators abandoned their plan after law enforcement authorities seized approximately 18 tons of ephedrine from a factory in Solapur, India, including several tons of ephedrine that Hafeez and his co-conspirators planned to use as a precursor chemical to manufacture methamphetamine in Mozambique.

Baktash Akasha Abdallah, 47, and Ibrahim Akasha Abdallah, 36, previously pled guilty to conspiring to import and importing heroin and methamphetamine into the US. Baktash Akasha Abdallah was sentenced on August 16, 2018, to 25 years in prison, and Ibrahim Akasha Abdallah was sentenced on January 10, 2020, to 23 years in prison.

Bollywood-linked Goswami was based in South Africa in the early 1990s. He later ended up in Dubai and in 1997 he was jailed there for dealing in Mandrax. Goswami was released from a Dubai prison in 2012 and headed to Kenya.

According to US authorities, a year later, drug trafficking webs around Goswami expanded. This is where Hafeez comes into the picture.

Goswami testified in the US in 2019 about drug trafficking. A transcription of Goswami’s testimony said he had previously met people, including representatives from the factory, at a hotel in Kenya. Goswami then decided to become a cooperating prosecution witness against all his former accomplices. He is still wanted in India over the Solapur ephedrine factory case.

The lawyers for Hafeez, 66, during London extradition trial, had presented evidence in the court that Hafeez actually worked as a credible informant for the spy agencies and law enforcement of the USA, UK, Pakistan and UAE and helped bust several drug import shipments. Hafeez said he didn’t want to be tried in the US because there was a real risk that he would be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The US government intensified its efforts to take Hafeez out after snatching Kenya’s Akasha brothers — Baktash Akasha Abdalla, Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, Bollywood star Mamta Kulkarni’s husband Vicky Goswami and Ghulam Hussein — from Kenyan soil in January 2017.

Court papers seen by Geo News show that Hafeez had been under the US scanner since at least 2004. Ommer Faruke Kolia, a British national of Indian origin from Leicester, detailed his story in a written witness statement on 19 February 2018 sent to the lawyers of Hafeez in London. Ommer Faruke Kolia died in highly mysterious circumstances four months later on June 21, 2018.

In April 2016, Mamta Kulkarni and Goswami were accused by the Indian police in connection with a Rs2,000-crore narcotics racket unearthed in Thane. The police seized 18.50 tonnes of ephedrine and 2.50 tonnes of acetic anhydride, both banned party drugs valued at more than Rs2,000 crores in the international market, from a pharmaceutical factory in Solapur and other locations in Thane and Mumbai.

These factories were allegedly owned by Goswami. The US had alleged that Goswami with the co-defendants had agreed to set up a factory in India from where the drugs would be shipped to the US for heavy profits.

The American government says it had secretly recorded statements of Baktash, Goswami and Hussain confirming Hafeez’s participation in the heroin deal and his 2015 text message to Goswami showing Hafeez was concerned about US law enforcement targeting him based on his participation in the transaction following the arrests in Kenya of Baktash, Ibrahim, Goswami, and Hussain.

Lawyers and family of Asif Hafeez said they cannot comment about the guilty plea because there are “protective orders” in place which prohibit them.