June 8. Two days later, his purported
audio message went viral, and all hell
broke loose. “We are conducting searches
and seizures everyday to identify prop
erty,” says an officer. Khan has been
booked under the Karnataka Protection
of Interest of Depositors in Financial
Institutions (KPID) Act, 2004. Khan
converted investment into deposits
flouting various rules, says the officer.
Curiously, IMA had managed to dodge
the warning signs that had been flashing
much earlier. As early as November 2018,
the revenue department had issued a
public notice in newspapers announcing
that IMA Pvt Ltd illegally collected
money from the public and was ‘diverting
the funds to the director’s self interest’
and that steps were being taken to forfeit
its properties. A Karnataka police wing
too, it turns out, had initiated an enquiry
after an RBI intelli gence input, but appar
ently it could not pin down sections of the
KPID Act on IMA’s activities.
Even as he fled, IMA’s Khan let fly sev
eral allegations, prompting B.Z. Zameer
Ahmed Khan, Karnataka Minister for
notice was initiated, Khan put out an
18minute video addressed to the
Bangalore City Police Commissioner in
which he claimed that he had tried to
ret urn to the country but was deplaned.
He claimed that he had assets worth Rs
1,350 crore which he would liquidate to
return people their money. Besides, he
dropped more names—among them a
former Rajya Sabha member and a mem
ber of the Karnataka Legislative Council—
without making any specific allegations.
So far, the police have arrested 12 direc
tors of the company and are probing the
records of four LLPs and a cooperative
society to which Mansoor Khan allegedly
routed the money he collected from
depositors. The focus, says an officer, is on
identifying assets of the company.
The IMA scam is the latest in a string of
ponzi schemes gone bust. Around 45
companies in Karnataka have been inves
tigated in the last decade or so for running
such schemes, says a police official. In its
heyday, IMA’s jewellery store would be
overflowing with customers. Now, the
messy task of untangling the knots. OFood and Civil Supplies, and legislator R.
Roshan Baig, to hold press conferences in
a bid to clear the air. While Zameer
Ahmed Khan said that he had sold a piece
of property in Bangalore to Mansoor
sometime ago, Baig said he only knew the
man because his firm helped to support a
school in his assembly constituency. Baig,
in his press conference, said the pur
ported audio clip was aimed at maligning
him and demanded that Karnataka CM
H.D. Kumaraswamy refer the matter to
the CBI for a probe because investors
from other states were also affected.
Meanwhile, Revenue Minister R.V.
Deshpande told reporters that Khan had
approached him last month seeking help.
On June 22, however, after the InterpolHOPE CRASH (Opposite page) IMA’s Mansoor Khan; investors gather outside the IMA office in Bangalore
After the Interpol notice,
Khan put out a video in
which he claimed that he
had tried to return to
the country but
was de-planed.8 July 2019 OUTLOOK 11