RAW, IB will probe NGOs’ source of foreign funds

As a fall out of the renewal of the Foreign Funding License to the Islamic Research Foundation managed by controversial preacher Zakir Naik, the Home Ministry is now going to introduce two more layers of security.

Ministry sources said that until now, the renewal of license of an NGO receiving foreign funds was done by the Foreigner’s division of the MHA, which was primarily a formality based on checking the documents submitted by the NGO seeking the license or its renewal.

The intelligence agencies, according to officials, will check the antecedents of the founders and the promoters of the NGO and the source of funding and whether the donation money is being used for the purpose they were meant for.

Earlier the MHA had suspended four ministry officials, including the department joint secretary GK Dwivedi over renewal of license to IRF despite at least 30 ‘adverse’ comments being found against it by the FCRA in June 2014.

According to officials, the ‘mistakes’ committed by the officials was now rectified and the NGO has now been put under the “prior permission category”. The foreign donations of firms, falling under this category, cannot be released by the Reserve Bank of India before seeking the home ministry’s clearance.