Officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday searched the residences of several IAS officers and senior police officials across the State, who were allegedly involved in the multi-crore I Monetary Advisory (IMA) scam where thousands of people were cheated out of their investments. Searches were still on when reports last came in.
Teams simultaneously carried out searches at 14 locations — 11 in Bengaluru and one each in Ramanagaram, Mandya, and Belagavi. Another team searched a house in Uttar Pradesh belonging to a maulvi who had allegedly taken money from Mohammed Mansoor Khan, co-founder of IMA and the prime accused in the case.
Searches were conducted at the residences of Hemant Nimbalkar, who was the then Inspector-General of Police, Criminal Investigation Department and Economic Offences; Ajay Hilori, who was then Deputy Commissioner of Police, East Bengaluru, and former Deputy Commissioner, Bengaluru Urban, B.M. Vijayshankar. The CBI registered a case in August 30 this year, and formed a 12-member Multi Disciplinary Investigation Team comprising its investigators who are being assisted by chartered accountants, forensic auditors, computer forensic experts, bankers and officials from various other regulatory departments.
Other police officers whose houses were searched include E.B. Sridhara, then Deputy Superintendent of Police, CID; M. Ramesh, who was Station House Officer, Commercial Street police station at the time; Gowri Shankar, the then sub-inspector attached to Commercial Street police station, and L.C. Nagaraj, who was posted as Assistant Commissioner (Bengaluru North). Mr. Nagaraj was the officer in charge of probing the IMA scam as the competent authority under KPID Act. He allegedly reported that no complainant came forward to register a case, and subsequently issued a favourable report to the government on IMA.
Teams also searched the houses of Manjunatha, village accountant, Bengaluru North, and P.D. Kumar, a former Chief Engineer with the Bangalore Development Authority. They have been accused of taking huge sums of money from Khan for favours. According to sources, all the accused — in their official capacity — had turned a blind eye to the IMA scam, furnished favourable reports on Khan and gave a clean chit in exchange for money. “As a result, no action was initiated against the company, which let the fraud to continue unhindered,” said CBI officials.
The sources pointed out that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had repeatedly flagged the issue about unauthorised collections and raising of deposits by the IMA group at the State-level coordination committee meetings and had also written several letters to various authorities in Karnataka.
“Based on these letters from RBI, enquiries were conducted on the officers whose houses were raided today,” said a source in the CBI. He added that investigations into expenditure statement of the IMA group had revealed that bribes were given to the officers by IMA directors on multiple occasions. The CBI, which registered a case on August 30, has already filed two chargesheets in this case.
