Top FBI officer arrives in New Delhi, to hold talks on cooperation with Indian agencies

INTERNATIONAL DESK: The assistant director of the International Operations Division of US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Raymond Duda, arrived in the national capital, New Dehli, on Tuesday and will advance the agency’s cooperation with law enforcement in India.

“A pleasure to welcome @FBI Assistant Director of International Operations, Raymond Duda, to New Delhi. During his visit, AD Duda will further the FBI’s cooperation with law enforcement agencies in India. International crime requires international cooperation,” US Embassy in India tweeted on his visit.

Duda became the assistant director of the FBI’s International Operations Division in February 2022. He had most recently served at the assistant-director level at another agency in the U.S. Intelligence Community, according to the statement released by the FBI.

Duda joined the FBI as a special agent in 1991 and was assigned to work on bank and insurance fraud and other white-collar crimes in the Charlotte Field Office in North Carolina.

In 1995, he was transferred to the Charlotte Safe Streets Task Force, which focused on investigations of violent crimes. He was promoted to task force supervisor in 2005, and to the supervisor of Charlotte’s Joint Terrorism Task Force in 2008.

Meanwhile, US ambassador-designate Eric Garcetti, who assumed his office last week, welcomed his first guest in India.

Garcetti arrived in India on Tuesday and met all the members of the Embassy.

On Garcetti’s arrival in India, Indian Embassy in the US tweeted, “Namaste, Ambassador-Designate Eric Garcetti! We’re thrilled to welcome you to #IncredibleIndia and work with you to build even stronger ties between our two great nations.”

The Senate on 15 March (Local Time) confirmed the former mayor of Los Angeles, Eris Garcetti, to be the US ambassador to India.

Garcetti won the mandate by a vote of 52 to 42, a major victory for US President Joe Biden as well, who stuck by his political ally in the face of the allegations and the prolonged process that has left the world’s most populous democracies without US representatives.

After the result, Garcetti said in a statement, “I’m thrilled with today’s outcome, which was a decisive and bipartisan decision to fill a critical post that has been vacant for far too long. Now the hard work begins.” (ANI)