JOIN USCBI probe may be ordered into deposit scams
Urban Development Minister Vinay Kumar Sorake said on Wednesday that the government was contemplating handing over the case pertaining to the illegal financial transactions by the Mandya Urban Development Authority (MUDA) as well as the Ramanagara and Channapatna Urban Development Authority (RCUDA) to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as crores of rupees are said to have been misused.
The minister, while replying to a question by JD(S) member B Puttanna, told the Council that three nationalised banks – Union Bank, Vijaya Bank and Allahabad Bank were involved in the scams.
Hence, instead of handing over the investigation to the CID as announced earlier by the government, it would be referred to the CBI. Any financial scam involving more than Rs one crore naturally goes to the CBI. The RBI too comes into the picture, he said.
Noting that the MUDA commissioner and others involved in the Mandya scam had been suspended, Sorake said that a first information report (FIR) had been lodged against the accused.
He said the accused had deposited nine fake bonds of Rs one crore denomination drawn from Union bank in Ramanagara and Channapatna, along with a bond for Rs 99 lakh.
In the Assembly, Leader of the Opposition H D Kumaraswamy said that while in Mandya, the scam was worth Rs five crore, in Ramanagara-Channapatna it was worth about Rs 9.5 crore.
The deposit money of the site allottees to the tune of Rs nine crore was deposited in Vijaya Bank and Rs 40 lakh in ICICI Bank of Malleswaram, he said. Later, the deposits were withdrawn on the pretext of depositing them in Indian Bank. But Indian Bank had written to RCUDA, saying it had not received any money.
Inquiry
A thorough inquiry had to be conducted to find the swindlers of the government money, Kumaraswamy said.
On Tuesday, MUDA Commissioner H S Shivaram and two others – Kebballi Anand and Nagalingaswamy – were arrested for allegedly removing funds from a bank on the pretext of depositing them in another bank. But the funds were misused by some individuals. In the case of RCUDA too, similar irregularity has been noticed.
Kumaraswamy wondered as to why such scams surface whenever the Congress comes to power. He pointed out that the Telgi scam came to light in 2002 when the Congress was in power.