"Ringgit supplies are hand-carried into Singapore," said a trader in the city-state's financial district, who asked not to be identified by name.
"For that reason, the rates may vary with the supply if the courier didn't arrive. In other cases I have customers miffed at seeing better rates on the Bloomberg than I can offer."
India's failed in decade-long prosecution of two Kashmiri extremists and the dozens of politicians who were tied to payments made through hawala. In March 1991, Delhi police arrested two Kashmiri militants.
As authorities probed their funding avenues, they gathered enough evidence to uncover a network of illegal funds that four years later implicated 38 serving and former cabinet ministers from several political parties.
Collectively, the politicians received or sent 650 million rupees (US$14 million) through a hawala system operated by the suspects, officials said. The extremists spent seven years in jail under the Terrorists and Disruptive Activities Act, which allowed them to be held without trial.
Then, in March 1998, India's Supreme Court delivered a final ruling on the evidence. It went against the police: A diary kept by one of those involved, which used code words to list transactions, wasn't admissible evidence without independent corroboration.
The police case collapsed. Some of the politicians who were implicated hold public office today. Though the two suspects pleaded guilty, they were sentenced to time served -- and set free.
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