Income Tax officials conducted simultaneous raids on the assets belonging to R.M. Manjunatha Gowda, President of Shivamogga District Cooperative Central Bank and Congress party leader in the district, on Wednesday.
The IT officials conducted verification of the documents related to financial transactions of Mr. Gowda and assets owned by him at his residence in Sharavathi Nagar locality in the city, in Tirthahalli town and at his farm house in Karakuchi village. A separate team is verifying the documents at the main office of SDCC Bank in the city and at Kodachadri Souharda Credit Cooperative Society managed by him.
It may be mentioned here that a scam related to issuance of gold loan at SDCC Bank was unearthed in July 2014. It was alleged that loan was issued for 778 accounts by mortgaging fake gold owing to which the bank had suffered loss to the tune of Rs 61.59 crore. Following this, a criminal case was booked against Mr. Gowda who was president of the bank then. The State government had ordered for a probe by the Criminal Investigation Department into the scam and had kept the administrative board of the bank under abeyance for some time.
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In the previous Assembly election, Mr. Gowda had contested from Tirthahalli constituency as a candidate of Karnataka Janata Paksha and tasted defeat against Kimmane Rathnakar of Congress party. After the election, Mr. Gowda had joined the Congress party.