The Central Bureau of Investigation on Sunday arrested suspended Congress MLA Roshan Baig in connection with the I Monetary Advisory or IMA scam in Bengaluru, PTI reported.

Unidentified CBI officials told the news agency that Baig was summoned on Sunday morning and arrested “based on material evidence”. Baig was questioned by the investigation agency for 10 hours, according to Hindustan Times.

The former Congress leader was produced before a court in Bengaluru, which sent him to judicial custody for 14 days.


Also read: IMA Jewels scam: Main accused Mansoor Khan arrested in Delhi, questioned by ED


The multi-crore IMA scam was uncovered in 2019. IMA jewels proprietor Mohammed Mansoor Khan was 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. He was arrested in July 2019.

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The Bengaluru-based company had been collecting investments for several years, assuring investors of returns of over 3% per month.

Hundreds of people had gathered outside the investment firm’s offices in Bengaluru in June 2019, claiming that they had not been provided returns on their investments for more than two months. The CBI took over the investigation of the fraud in September that year, on the Karnataka government’s request.

An audio clip, purportedly of Khan, asked the police to return money to people by liquidating his properties, and blamed former Congress minister Roshan Baig for the crisis. Baig was accused of not returning Rs 400 crore taken from the IMA before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He denied the allegations and claimed that the clip was fake.

Baig was suspended by the Congress in June last year for alleged anti-party activities. He had criticised the party for its dismal performance in the Lok Sabha elections.