IMA Jewels chief Mansoor Khan names Congress, JD(S) biggies

Bengaluru: Founder of I Monetary Advisory (IMA), Mohammed Mansoor Khan, who has been accused of cheating 40,000 investors, has now released a video from an undisclosed location, promising to return to India and expose several powerful people, including politicians and an IAS officer.

Mansoor Khan fled India around June 13 and investigators believe he is in hiding in Dubai. In his video, however, Mansoor Khan claims he left the country because there were threats to his life and the lives of his family members. Addressing Alok Kumar, the newly-appointed Police Commissioner of Bengaluru, Mansoor says he is willing to come back to India and cooperate with the investigation.

NAMES OF POLITICIANS

Khan says: “I congratulate former Rajya Sabha member K. Rahman Khan, K. Ubaidullah Sharief (Congress worker), Mohammed Khalik Ahmed (editor, Pasban), Mukhtiyar Ahmed (named in a TADA case and discharged later), Feroz Abdullah Sait of Feroz Real Estate, Prestige Group’s Irfan Razack and JD(S) MLC T.A. Sharavana (President of Jewellers’ Association), for their success in causing harm to IMA, also those from my group of Directors who swindled money and those who spread hate messages that hastened the collapse of IMA.”

Mansoor has been accused of running a ponzi scheme — where money is rotated from new investors to older investors — in the name of IMA. However, in his video, he claims his was a ‘true business’ which has been made to go bankrupt by corrupt forces at the Centre and State-level.

IAS OFFICER DEMANDED BRIBE

Without naming him, Mansoor accused an IAS officer of demanding Rs. 10 crore bribe for issuing a No Objection Certificate (NoC) making way for a foreign company to invest in IMA. “I was ready to pay Rs. 10 crore to the IAS officer but the process got delayed and the foreign company did not invest,” he said. “In the last 13 years, all entities of IMA have made a profit worth Rs. 12,000 crore, which we have paid to all our investors. Even the Rs. 2,000 crore capital investments have been returned to the investors. The remaining assets worth Rs. 1,350 crore will be liquidated to return the money I owe the investors,” he says in the video.

Mansoor also names a bunch of people, sarcastically thanking them for stabbing him in the back. He claims there is a massive controversy behind IMA’s fall, and also has bitter words for his investors who complained about IMA, and did not wait for his business to get better. “IMA has been helping around 21,000 families with monthly income, around 18,000 children with education across India, and given ration to 7,300 families,” he says.

Threat to life

Promising to come back to India, Mansoor adds that he is in a better state of mind than when he released an audio clip last week, where he had said he was going to kill himself. Claiming there were anyway people trying to kill him, and that he wasn’t afraid, he says, “The moment I reach there, those people would have made all the plans to kill me, all planning would have been done to shut my mouth — but I’m not coming back for myself.”

“In the previous audio, I said that I would take my life. That was a demotivated statement of mine. But I know that if I have to die, then why I should kill myself when there are people ready to do that. I know that they can kill me in custody as well. They can kill me after I’m produced in Court and if I get bail from there and leave then they can kill me on the road.”

Sharavana clarifies

Reacting to allegations made against him by Mansoor Khan, T.A. Sharavana told reporters, “There is no connection between me and him. The way his business functioned was damaging, and he doesn’t follow the Association. Khan has a set of manufacturing dealers who supply at low rates, and he wanted the Association to bend rules for IMA. Let him prove his allegations with evidence. I will file a defamation case against him after discussing with my lawyer. All he is doing is diverting attention.”