WASHINGTON, Nov 28: Dawood Ibrahim, one of the most wanted men in India, is working closely with groups like Al Qaeda and Lashkar-i-Taiba, says the US News and and World Report magazine in its latest issue. Dawood runs a mafia stretching into 14 countries and is now the target of two US investigations, according to the Washington-based periodical.

The cover story, The New Business of Terror, shows how ‘terrorist groups’, pressured by a worldwide crackdown on funding, are transforming their cells into crime syndicates — and how counter-terrorism officials are unprepared for the shift in tactics.

The report, based on interviews with police and intelligence agents in six countries, is by the magazine’s chief investigative correspondent, David Kaplan.

The report says: “The boss of India’s top syndicate controls a criminal network that reaches into 14 countries, with a small army of contract killers, smugglers and extortionists at his command.”

“But there is another side to Dawood Ibrahim. The Muslim exile from Mumbai has thrown in his lot with Al Qaeda and other jihadists, according to the US and Indian governments, and has become one of the world’s most wanted terrorists.”

Apart from chronicling his rise, the magazine quotes US officials as saying they now have Dawood Ibrahim at the centre of two investigations: one by the Drug Enforcement Administration looking at his ties to the heroin trade; another, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, tracing his assets and ties to ‘terrorist groups’.