The Central Bureau of Investigation on Saturday filed a supplementary charge-sheet against 28 accused persons, including five police officers, in connection with the multi-crore IMA scam. One of the accused is senior police officer Hemant Nimbalkar, the husband of Congress MLA Anjali Nimbalkar.
According to the reports, the charge-sheet filed by the CBI also include the CEO and managing director of the Bengaluru-based investment firm I-Monetary Advisory (IMA), Mohammed Mansoor Khan, who had duped investors across the state to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore.
Earlier, the CBI had registered four cases in connection with the IMA scam. According to the charge-sheet, the accused had collected unauthorised deposits from a large number of depositors on the promise of a dream return and had duped them approximately Rs 4,000 crore.
The CBI has named six police officers, who are currently under investigation by the SIT for their alleged involvement in the IMA scam. The senior officers named in the FIR are LC Nagaraj, EB Sridhara, Hemant Nimbalkar, Ajay Hilori, M Ramesh, and P Gowrishankar.
The charge-sheet alleges that Nagaraj, along with other police officials, did not verify and act on the complaints against IMA. The CBI said that the accused instead gave a clean chit to the company and recommended that the complaints be closed stating that IMA had not indulged in any illegal acts.
The charge-sheet also alleges that the ‘illegal’ activities of the company continued unabated and thousands of investors were scammed, who lost crores of rupees in the scam. In August 2019, the Karnataka government had transferred the multi-crore scam case to the CBI, in which several politicians and senior government officials are accused.
MA halal investment scam
The IMA halal Ponzi scheme was run by the founder of IMA group Mohammed Mansoor Khan and his associates, who duped lakhs of people by promising higher returns using Islamic way of investment. The IMA promoter has been charged for running the Ponzi scheme, which allegedly duped 40,000 investors to the tune of over Rs 4,000 crore.
The IMA scam is one of the biggest money laundering and financial fraud cases unearthed in Karnataka recently. Around 40,000 investors reportedly lost their money in this scam. IMA Managing Director Mohammad Mansoor Khan had attracted investors, especially Muslims, by offering an investment scheme that appeared to follow Islamic precepts and provided lucrative returns.
More than 41,000 complaints were registered by investors accusing IMA directors of committing fraud after the firm closed in May 2019 and ceased to pay dividends.
The names of few Congress leader had also surfaced for their alleged involvement in the Ponzi scheme, making it a high-profile case. Senior Congress leaders like BZ Zameer Ahmed Khan, former Congress MLA Roshan Baig, Congress legislator from Khanapur in Belagavi Anjali Nimbalkar’s husband and Karnataka IPS officer, Hemant Nimbalkar’s name had also surfaced in the investigation.
