The investigation into the investment fraud in handling the funds of the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) is likely to be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Comptroller and Auditor-General had recently uncovered a massive scam where three BDA officials had unauthorisedly invested BDA funds totalling Rs. 500 crore in Mutual Funds (MF) between 1999 and 2008. The BDA, in its complaint to the police, has named three officials: Sandeep Dash, a financial member of BDA from May 1997 to May 2005, his successor M.N. Sheshappa and cashier C. Vasanth Kumar. While the two former financial members are no longer with BDA, cashier Vasanth Kumar has been suspended.
BDA had authorised the then financial member Sandeep Dash to invest Rs. 100 crore in Mutual Funds. However, he is said to have speculated the money in his personal name, showing for the record that he had put the money in a fixed deposit at Indian Overseas Bank (IOB), the then official bank for BDA. The practice was continued by his successor as well, the audit has now revealed. BDA Commissioner T. Sham Bhat told The Hindu that they had written to the government to hand over the probe into the case to a specialised agency with adequate expertise to handle such economic offences. However, he stopped short of recommending a CBI probe.
However, sources say that the scam couldn’t have been perpetrated without the connivance of bank officials and any bank fraud could only be investigated by CBI, paving the way for an eventual CBI probe.
