Police remain non-committal

In 2012, G. Janardhana Reddy was accused of being involved in a cash-for-bail scam when the CBI arrested a lower court judge in Hyderabad for receiving bribe to grant bail to the BJP leader. He now faces allegations of acting as a middleman and bribing Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials to close an investigation against a private firm, Ambidant Marketing Private Limited However, the city police remain non-committal over the issue, though they issued a statement which said that the proprietor of the firm, Syed Ahmed Fareed, who was arrested last week, had made these allegations. “We have a money trail from the accused to a close associate of Mr. Reddy. Only his interrogation can reveal whether he really did bribe the ED officials. We will write to the ED leadership and keep them in the loop,” said Bengaluru Police Commissioner T. Suneel Kumar. However, ED sources paint a different picture. The ED, Bengaluru, had raided the premises of Ambidant Marketing Private Limited in January 2018 over violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999. “Mr. Fareed had floated a firm in Dubai and indulged in foreign exchange trading violating FEMA. The total violation was to the tune of Rs. 40000000 and we served him a notice in February 2018. The case was adjudicated four months ago as ED slapped a penalty of Rs. 20000000 on him and collected it. FEMA is a civil law and only penalty can be collected,” sources said, and wondered why anyone would pay Rs. 200000000 to close a probe in which the maximum penalty was Rs. 20000000, which had been paid for. At the time of the raid on Ambidant, the ED wrote to SEBI and RBI flagging the issue of how the firm — a non-banking financial company — was collecting deposits promising unrealistic returns to investors. According to sources, the RBI wrote to the Chief Secretary, Karnataka, in March 2018 alerting the State administration. “The Chief Secretary wrote to all Deputy Commissioners in the State. Bengaluru (Urban) DC said multiple FIRs against the firm were under probe in the city,” said a source.