Mohammed Mansoor Khan, the owner of I Monetary Advisory Jewels, was arrested on Friday in New Delhi in connection with a ponzi scam. Khan was being questioned by the Enforcement Directorate, which is investigating the case, PTI reported.
Khan has been accused of running a ponzi scheme in Karnataka that has allegedly duped more than 30,000 people of Rs 5,000 crore. People from Bengaluru, Hyderabad, New Delhi, and Tamil Nadu are said to have invested into the company.
The Bengaluru-based company had been collecting investments for several years, assuring investors of returns of over 3% per month. However, the fraud came to light after hundreds of people gathered outside the investment firm’s offices on June 12, saying that it had not provided returns on their investments for more than two months.
The IMA Jewels owner, who had fled to Dubai, was arrested after he arrived in Delhi. A Special Investigation Team, which is also investigating IMA, said that Khan had been persuaded to come back to the country. “Accordingly, he travelled from Dubai to New Delhi [Flight AI 916] and landed at 01550 hours IST,” the agency said in a statement. Both the SIT and the Enforcement Directorate had issued lookout circulars against Khan.
On July 8, the SIT had arrested Deputy Commissioner of Bengaluru urban district BM Vijay Shankar for allegedly taking a bribe of Rs 1.5 crore from Khan. Shankar had purportedly taken the bribe in exchange for a favourable report after the Reserve Bank of India had asked the state government to investigate the firm’s business.
The SIT had also detained suspended Congress MLA Roshan Baig in the case and questioned him for several hours.
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