Seize RS 33 CR JEWELS 26 IMMOVABLE PROPERTIES OF IMA OWNER FOUND

The probe team said it found 33 cr worth it jewels,precious gems and documents and has identified 26 immovable properties including commercial buildings,land,school property, and apartments, which are said to be in the name of mansoor khan.

During the raid at ima jewels showroom at jayanagar here sit seized 43 kg gold worth 13cr 5,864 carat of diamond worth 17.6cr 520 kg of silver worth 1.5cr precious gems worth 1.5cr it said. The sit found 1.5 kg of gold 1.5 kg od silver and 2.69 lakh cash from tabassum`s house in shivajinagar.

Central Crime Branch (CCB) conducted raids at three different locations at the residences of wives of I Monetary Advisory (IMA) jewels founder Mansoor Khan who is an accused perpetrating financial fraud in Bengaluru.

Raids were conducted in Shivajinagar, the residence of Khan’s first wife and two different residences in Tilak Nagar related to his second and third wife.

CCB collected some important documents of investments and details of Khan’s financial issues, 1.5-kilogram gold and Rs 2.7 lakh cash.

Karnataka government had constituted an 11-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the alleged fraud by the IMA, which has an estimated Rs 200 crore investment of Muslim women alone. Over 38 thousands of complaints have been filed by people who had invested in IMA.

18 complaints filed in high court to direct the state government to handover the IMA case to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Several investors also hail from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu.

Police have also registered a case against IMA Jewels and Khan and teams have been formed to nab him. Earlier, seven directors of different entities linked to Khan had been arrested.

It is alleged that IMA Jewels, with Muslims as its prime investors, has not paid interests on investments for the last three months.

Earlier, scores of investors staged protests outside IMA Jewels’ office in Sivaji Nagar, demanding the firm to return their money.

Hitting out at Congress leaders for the party’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha polls, Roshan Baig had recently held former Karantaka CM Siddaramaiah’s “arrogance” and Dinesh Gundu Rao’s “immaturity” responsible for the “flop show”.

Congress suspends Karnataka leader Roshan Baig for anti-party activities

Congress on Tuesday suspended its Karnataka MLA Roshan Baig for anti-party activities.

“All India Congress Committee has approved the proposal sent by KPCC to take action against R Roshan Baig, MLA on account of his anti-party activities. He has been suspended from the party with immediate effect,” Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee said in a press statement.

Earlier in the day, KPCC chief Dinesh Gundu Rao had told media that he had sought action against Roshan Baig for his outburst against the state leadership.

As Roshan Baig is an AICC member and senior leader, action against him had to be decided by the Congress high command.

Roshan Baig’s alleged links with IMA jewels, allegedly involved in a financial fraud, duping thousands of investors, were also brought to the notice of central leadership, Dinesh Gundu Rao had said.

Hitting out at Congress leaders for the party’s poor performance in the Lok Sabha polls, Roshan Baig had recently held former Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah’s “arrogance” and Dinesh Gundu Rao’s “immaturity” responsible for the “flop show”.

Roshan Baig had also called KC Venugopal a “buffoon”.

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As IMA Jewels founder Mohammed Mansoor Khan pulled off a flawless escape, his  flight to Dubai has left the police in a quandary, with more questions than anwers

BENGALURU: Soon after they finished celebrating Eid, thousands of investors in IMA Jewels were in for a shock. Just a few days after the festival, they are now staring at the possibility of never getting back the money they had parked with IMA Jewels for the promise of spectacular returns.

Since June 8, when promoter Mohammed Mansoor Khan left for Dubai, no one has been able to come up with an explanation as to how Mansoor managed to escape. Police say that he left for Dubai on June 8 after having cleared his showroom of all displayed jewels and diamonds. But ask them if he took the multi-crore booty with him, bypassing officials at the airport, and they have no answer. Several questions still exist on how Mansoor managed to pull off the perfect escape.

“There are too many loopholes in how he left the country. His cars were found at the airport but the driver – his man Friday- is missing. Mansoor was also questioned by the Central Crime Branch on June 6 and was warned of police action. He disappeared within 48 hours,” an officer said. Also suspect is his decision to put the blame on Congress MLA Roshan Baig, turning the entire development into a political potboiler. For investors, there is nothing but bad news for now according to the police themselves, who pointed out that in spite of red flags raised as far back as 2014, but even then no action was taken.

“The RBI had in 2014 itself red-flagged IMA on several markers. The police could have called for documents and questioned Mansoor, but they chose to look the other way,” a police officer said.
Discussing the hawala angle, the officer added, “It seems, prima facie, that Mansoor routed the depositor’s money outside the country through hawala. Many high bracket depositors would have used hawala to deposit black money in IMA,” the officer said.

Though the agencies have their work cut out for them, the volume is huge. “The manpower and resources given are limited, given the vast scope of the investigation,” the officer admitted.While the SIT may invoke the Karnataka Protection of Interest of Depositors in Financial Establishments Act, 2004, critics of the law say it is neither punitive nor effective. Another law, the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Ordinance, 2019, could be invoked, earning the state the infamy of having the IMA scam as the first case to be booked under the ordinance.

“The government must hand over the case to the CBI. Most investments were done in cash, bullion and jewellery, raising serious national security concerns. They run into crores of rupees,” said a police officer, on condition of anonymity, adding that it was natural that the state would resist a CBI probe, considering the revelations of corruption that would result from one.

In response, the official police reaction has been to deny all interest in IMA till someone came ahead to file a complaint. “There were no complaints against IMA until June 9 when Mohammed Khalid Ahammed registered a complaint. People are to be blamed for investing in such companies,” said a police officer.

BENGALURU:

Seven directors of the city-based IMA Jewels were arrested and are being grilled by the Special Investigation Team to know their alleged role in the multi-crore ponzi scam operated by its owner Mohammed Mansoor Khan, police said on Thursday.

“On being warned against delaying the inevitable, the directors turned up at the city police commissioner’s office and surrendered on Wednesday. They were arrested and produced in a local court for our custody to interrogate them as Khan is still at large,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (central) Rahul Kumar told reporters.

The accused directors — Anwar Pasha, Arshad Khan, Dada Peer, Naveed Ahmed, Nazir Hussain, Nizamuddin and Waseem — were remanded in 10-day police custody to unearth the scam, which swindled the hard-earned savings of thousands of investors from across the state.

“As the case is being investigated by the SIT, its head B.R. Ravikanth Gowda is interrogating the accused on what went wrong leading to the IMA (I Monetary Advisory) go bust and Khan fleeing the country last week,” said Kumar.

IMA’s chartered account Iqbal Khan was also arrested on early Thursday after the directors disclosed his name and his alleged role in the scam that has rocked the state and the minority community as majority of investors and depositors in its ponzi schemes are lower and middle class Muslims.

Though the police launched a massive hunt for Khan, he is reported to have fled the country after Eid on June 5 along with his family, and huge quantity of gold ornaments, silver jewellery, diamonds and unspecified amount of cash from his posh showroom in the city’s centre.

“We are on the lookout for Khan and will seek Interpol’s help through the Union home ministry to extradite him to India after ascertaining in which country he is hiding,” said Kumar.

The ponzi scam came to light on June 10 when the IMA showroom did not open for business after a week-long closure for Eid-ul-Fitr at the end of Ramzan last week and its Managing Director (Khan) reportedly fled to Dubai or Saudi Arabia to escape the wrath of his investors as their savings are lost.

The SIT team also raided IMA’s head office and its main showroom and seized volumes of documents related to properties, assets, collaterals pledged by investors and depositors and bank accounts for investigation.

About 20,000 investors have filed a complaint with the local police station, enclosing a photocopy of documents, including passbooks showing their investments in the company.

The SIT has directed the banks to freeze the accounts of the company, Khan and his relatives to prevent any transaction.

Nasheman news

Investors panicked when the company started defaulting on payments

In March 2019, probably for the first time in 13 years, the I Monetary Advisory (IMA) Group, which had taken money from tens of thousands of investors across the State, defaulted on payments.

On June 9, the police received a trickle of complaints from a few citizens. In less than a week, while Eid was being celebrated, that trickle grew into a flood with more than 33,500 complaints against the group and its founder and managing director Mohammed Mansoor Khan, who is absconding.

The IMA Group had been under the scanner of several agencies, but no action had been taken. According to officials, not a single citizen had stepped forward in response to a public notice in November 2018 by the Revenue Department seeking complaints against the group for cheating investors.

Founded in 2006, the group took deposits from citizens on which monthly dividend was paid in the range of 2.75% to 8%. “Many of those who complained against Ambidant Marketing [another company allegedly involved in a similar scam] had invested in IMA as well. But they were not willing to file a complaint against IMA at the time as they were receiving dividends,” said a senior revenue official.

Initial rumblings

The situation changed in March 2019 when IMA started defaulting on payments.

“IMA has now revealed itself to be a ponzi-like scheme, which operates on the constant rotation of money, where old investors are paid with money taken from new investors. Money is ploughed into various businesses, in this case gold bullion, jewellery and real estate. If any chunk of investment is stuck or there is lack of new investors, it will disrupt the cycle and the company will go kaput. This is exactly what seems to have happened with IMA,” explained a senior police official.

With Mansoor Khan successfully giving dividends for 13 years, investigators are probing the reason for the default. In an audio message, which he recorded before he went underground, Mansoor claimed to have given Congress leader Roshan Baig ₹400 crore, which was not returned. Mr. Baig has denied the charge.

The Special Investigation Team and the Enforcement Directorate are now auditing his accounts to find out how the funds received as investments were diverted. Police sources said that in the past two years, IMA had come under severe stress.

According to a source in the police, “Mansoor, who was being blackmailed by various agencies and even some media organisations, had to make contributions to politicians to stay afloat. His attempts to borrow money from the market failed.”

When money was tight and he started defaulting on payments, he alerted investors and blamed the eight-week-long parliamentary elections for “disrupting cash flow in our market”. In a series of messages to investors, he gave several deadlines for payments in April and May, but missed all of them. As rumours grew on social media that he was planning to flee, Mansoor sent a message to investors in mid-May appealing to them not to listen to rumours and asked them to file complaints with the cyber crime cell of the police against those who were carrying out this “misinformation campaign”. He assured investors that the network was “sound enough with its gold stock and business clientele network, assets in the form of land and buildings”.

But it did little to stem the panic.

In the last message on May 27, he asked investors not to come to the IMA offices for one week as the rush of people was hampering business. Two days later, he closed the offices. He assured investors that he would pay all their dues by June 5 and re-open the offices by June 10. It is now learnt that he even held a meeting with other directors of IMA and assured them that all was well.

Police step in

In the backdrop of these initial rumblings, acting on orders from Neelamani N. Raju, DG&IGP, Karnataka State Police, the Central Crime Branch called Mansoor for questioning. “On June 6, he was questioned for over an hour. We sought documents about the financial health of his company, which he promised to submit,” said Alok Kumar, Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime), Bengaluru.

But this seemed to be the tipping point. Fearing arrest, Mansoor is said to have fled the country on the night of June 8. The SIT is yet to confirm this. Hours before he absconded, he posted on Facebook: “The IMA Group has property worth ₹1,050 crore in Bengaluru. It has physical assets, but people don’t have patience, people are greedy, people are anxious, people filled with anxiety, people filled with un-Islamic life.”

BJP for central intervention

While demanding a CBI probe, BJP State president and leader of opposition B.S. Yeddyurappa said that party MPs from the State will press for intervention by the Union government on behalf of cheated investors. He was speaking to a delegation of cheated IMA investors that met him on Saturday and sought his support.

“The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has already started a probe. We also speak to the Union government to make all efforts to arrest the absconding kingpin Mohammed Mansoor Khan, said to have fled abroad. Only a CBI probe can deliver justice to the victims,” he said.

Meanwhile, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) accused politicians and a few religious heads from the minority community of providing credibility to IMA and its kingpin. It demanded a probe into their role in abetment of the crime as well.

SIT raids residences of directors

The Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Saturday searched the residences of the seven IMA directors who are currently in their custody.

Six teams conducted simultaneous searches in Tusker Town, Shivajinagar, Govindapura and HBR Layout, and seized a cache of documents related to IMA.

Meanwhile, the auditor, Iqbal Khan, was questioned for the second consecutive day. “He has not been arrested, but is helping the SIT audit the accounts of the firm, to understand the scam,” said a source.

So far, the number of complaints against the company has reached 33,500.

Sources said SIT officials are preparing paper work to get a Red Corner Notice issued against Mansoor even though some suspect him of fleeing to the UAE on June 8.

courtesy

The Hindu

Dr S Jaishankar, a career diplomat with extensive experience in bilateral relations with China, US and Pakistan, said he was “honoured to be given this responsibility”.

Dr Jaishankar joined PM Modi’s cabinet on Thursday. (File)
NEW DELHI: 

The country’s new Foreign Minister, Dr S Jaishankar, in his first tweet this morning, after he took charge of Ministry of External Affairs on Friday, said he was “proud to follow on the footsteps” of his predecessor and senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj.

Dr Jaishankar, a career diplomat with extensive experience in bilateral relations with China, US and Pakistan, said he was “honoured to be given this responsibility”.

“My first tweet. Thank you all for the best wishes! Honoured to be given this responsibility. Proud to follow on the footsteps of @SushmaSwaraj ji,” he wrote. 

He was one of the 57 ministers who took oath on Thursday at a glittering ceremony with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, elected for a second term with a huge mandate.

In another tweet, Dr Jaishankar wrote: “We at Team @MEAIndia continue to be at your service 24×7”.

Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, Dr Jaishankar’s predecessor, was known for her prompt response to distress calls on Twitter. She leaves a legacy of being an easily-accessible foreign minister.

Soon after his Twitter debut, Dr Jaishankar also replied to the congratulatory messages from United States, France, among other countries.

Dr Jaishankar, who had received the Padma Shri award from President Ram Nath Kovind in March, was the country’s longest-serving foreign secretary in four decades between 2015 and 2018 and helped craft much of PM Modi’s foreign policy.

As the new foreign minister, S Jaishankar will be expected to bring to bear experience from his time as the Indian ambassador to China between 2009 and 2013 and help improve relations with Beijing, which were badly hit following the Doklam stand-off in 2017.

His appointment also comes at a time when India’s relations with Pakistan are at a sensitive point following the tragic terror attack in Pulwama in February that killed 40 soldiers.

Dr Jaishankar is not a member of parliament yet.