Mohammed Mansoor Khan.
Credit: Special Arrangement
Bengaluru: The competent authority for IMA has started paying thousands of investors, who had lost their hard-earned money in the Ponzi scam more than four years ago.
IMA, a so-called Halal investment company headquartered in Bengaluru, went bust in June 2019 after its founder Mohammed Mansoor Khan fled to Dubai. At the time, it owed its 61,984 investors Rs 2,695 crore. The claims were reduced to Rs 1,431 crore after deducting the money investors had already received from IMA.
The competent authority was appointed by the state government to recover investors’ money by attaching and auctioning IMA's movable and immovable assets. It seized IMA’s assets valued at Rs 475 crore and raised nearly Rs 90 crore by auctioning movable ones.
In early 2022, the authority returned Rs 19.62 crore to 6,858 investors.
In the second tranche, the authority is to pay 55,126 investors Rs 69.46 crore under an equitable, graded and proportionate distribution scheme okayed by the court on October 5, 2023. Investors will receive anywhere between 2.7% and 14.2% of their dues.
Amlan Aditya Biswas, the competent authority and special officer for IMA cases, said around 50,000 investors' bank accounts had been validated. Re 1 was sent to these bank accounts through the State Bank of India (SBI), he added.
"The penny drop verification took four days. Around 5,000 accounts remain unverified. Some were duplicated, others had wrong entries," he told DH.
As a result, the authority will be paying only about 50,000 verified accounts while the remaining accounts will be reverified, he said.
The 50,000-odd accounts will cumulatively receive Rs 60 crore, and payout orders were issued to the SBI on November 7. The payouts are being made on a daily basis, he added.
Mehboob Dodmani and three members of his family were among those who received the payout. Out of the Rs 7 lakh invested by the family, they received around Rs 18,000 on Thursday, he said.
The authority is also making efforts to approach the Enforcement Directorate special court for permission to auction the IMA's immovable assets, worth Rs 350-375 crore. Investors will receive another payout from the proceeds of the auction, Biswas said.