Former Mysore City Improvement Authority (MUDA) commissioner G T Dinesh Kumar, who was arrested by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) on Wednesday, allegedly handed over the authority’s properties to pals and family and later acquired them for his personal actual property enterprise pursuits.
Kumar served because the MUDA commissioner within the 2022-24 interval when large-scale irregularities are alleged to have occurred within the Mysuru civic company. He’s alleged to have allotted 40 MUDA websites to Chamundeshwari Nagara Sarvodaya Sanga, a co-operative society, whereas his actual property enterprise affiliate procured the final energy of lawyer for the websites to promote them within the open market, as per the central company.
Kumar’s properties had been searched by the ED earlier this week as a part of its investigations into alleged cash laundering by way of unlawful MUDA land offers. He was arrested after he responded to a summons issued by the ED, sources stated.
In a prosecution grievance earlier this 12 months, the ED had acknowledged that its investigation had established that Kumar had colluded with actual property businessmen N Manjunath, R Jayaramu, Santosh Sequeira, M Basavaraju, and many others., to illegally and fraudulently allot websites of MUDA within the identify of ineligible individuals.
The ED reported that Kumar allotted the websites within the identify of benamis and actual property businessmen.
“The unlawful gratification, thus obtained, was additional laundered and proven as derived out of respectable sources. It has additionally been revealed that cash was routed by way of a co-operative society for buy of property, luxurious automobiles and many others., within the identify of family of GT Dinesh Kumar…,” the ED stated earlier this 12 months.
Kumar is alleged to have allotted 48 websites underneath the controversial 50:50 compensation scheme throughout the 2023-24 monetary 12 months, regardless of the state city improvement division in 2023 red-flagging the scheme as unlawful.
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“That is additionally one of many circumstances to indicate that the websites are allotted as compensation illegally by the then Commissioners working from Might 2020 to June 2024 and different officers and officers of MUDA in collusion with the land grabbers,” the Justice P N Desai fee set as much as probe the MUDA rip-off by the Karnataka authorities acknowledged in its latest report.
In January this 12 months, the ED had acknowledged that proof seized throughout its searches had revealed “giant scale unlawful allotment of websites, unlawful acceptance of gratification for making allotments, sale/switch of websites in different individuals’ identify” to “obfuscate the true origin of proceeds of crime and technology of unaccounted money” throughout Kumar and D B Natesh’s tenures as MUDA commissioners.
Whereas the ED case in opposition to Natesh was quashed by the Karnataka Excessive Courtroom final 12 months because of the absence of his identify within the predicate offence, Kumar was not granted respite within the courts.
Based on the ED, the earnings of the gross sales of the illegally allotted MUDA websites “can be being routed to Shri.GT Dinesh Kumar by way of loans/advances to his family and associates. Additionally, a number of the websites had been transferred to family/associates of GT Dinesh Kumar and different influential individuals”.
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Although the Chamundeshwari Sangha co-operative society had not positioned any software for allotment of MUDA housing websites as compensation for land wrongly acquired by MUDA, Kumar “illegally allotted the above talked about 40 websites as compensation in opposition to 5 acres 2 Guntas land” in Devanur village, in violation of presidency orders, the ED acknowledged.
MUDA’s 50:50 land compensation scheme got here underneath the scanner of legislation enforcement businesses after an RTI activist alleged that Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s household additionally obtained an allotment of 14 websites in 2021 as compensation for a 3.16-acre property acquired by MUDA in Mysuru’s Kesare village.