BENGALURU: The multi-crore I Monetary Advisory (IMA) scam could have been checked much earlier and the money of thousands of gullible depositors saved if some of the central and state financial regulators had kept a vigil on the unregulated deposits in IMA and acted in time. Only a forensic audit can establish the full extent of the scam, sources told The New Indian Express.
The founder of IMA, Mohammed Mansoor Khan, grew his business manifold behind the facade of Islamic banking after he reportedly escaped the scrutiny of financial regulators, the source added. Mansoor Khan has been arrested in the Ponzi scam and is presently in the custody of the Special Investigation Team (SIT).
“Investigation in the multi-crore scam points to the lackadaisical approach or sheer oversight of many financial regulatory bodies in checking the unregulated deposits in the IMA.
The actual volume of the fraud can be determined through a forensic audit. The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which is investigating the estimated Rs 2,500 crore scam should hand over the audit to a professional agency,” said the officer.
Giving examples of the alleged negligence, the official sources, who are privy to the IMA investigation, said that when Mansoor had registered IMA Limited Liability Company (LLP) in 2013, the Registrar of Companies, Bengaluru, should have checked the documents and questioned him why he wanted to change the nature of his deposit scheme and register an LLP company? An LLP provides advantage of limited liability to its owners and, at the same time requires, minimal maintenance. After registering an LLP, Mansoor began collecting money from his investors.
“Those were the early fault lines and alarm bells should have started ringing then on IMA deposits. The Registrar of Co-operative Societies, Karnataka, should have also scrutinised IMA documents and antecedents of Mansoor, when he registered the IMA Co-operative Society with the public as its members. The role of the Revenue Department, which is the implementing authority of the Karnataka Protection of Interest of Depositors in Financial Establishments Act, 2004, also needs to be scrutinised.
"The Securities & Exchange Board of India (Sebi) also reportedly gave a clean chit to IMA in 2017. The RBI has a department on Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs). They could have checked the fraud when the RBI itself had red-flagged the company during a State Level Co-ordination Committee (SLCC) meeting in 2017 and had raised serious concerns about the depositors’ money in IMA. The company didn’t have the resources to pay the assured profits to its depositors,” said the officials. The Directorate of Income Tax (Investigation), Karnataka & Goa, at the same SLCC meeting, had observed that IMA was not following the Know Your Customer (KYC) norms.
IMA reportedly accepted deposits of around `4,000 crore from the public. “Mansoor had returned `2,600 crore. Prima facie, about `2,500 crore, including interest, is still with him,” the officer added.