The success in cracking the massive fraud in the illegal transportation of mining depends on two factors. a) Ensuring that all the information unearthed during the probe into the activities of mining trader Imran Khan is used effectively to get a water tight case, b) Trace his links and alliances with other mining companies, traders and influential politicians and c) most importantly, trace the money trail of each of his accounts and see where it leads to.
Imran Khan is no ordinary ore transporter or mining trader. A man who has 530 fixed deposits in one bank is a serious player. And according to the Crime Branch, accounts which had a cumulative amount of over Rs 70 crore have been identified and taken possession of but the specific contours of this operation aren’t available.
Now let us step back for a moment from the case of Imran Khan and look at the broad picture. If he is just one trader, and there were at least 100 others who worked as middle men in mining transport operations, then imagine the scale of operations.
And while much of the illegal money they allegedly made from mining may never see the light of day, it is likely that even if you look at amounts which are accountable, the figures of royalty and profits that they should have earned as mining traders, would be far in excess of what the Mines Department would have received from these traders as loyalty and other fees.
The essence of illegality lies here. And these traders are not alone. And some of them may not be what they are. With fake addresses, they worked as fronts for some mining firms and politicians. And that is why they have never been challenged by authorities. They transported ore through road and water, they used jetties, they extracted ore in mining pits, and they did all of this by hovering around the border line – and often crossing it – between legality and blatant illegality.
And this is a “border crossing” which was not in the State’s interests. In fact, there is every reason to believe that mining officials aided this border crossing, by willful neglect and at times by proactive support.
So in reality the mission has to be three fold. a) Identify more such traders whose modus operandi was likely to be similar to the activities allegedly indulged in by Imran Khan. b) Identify mining leases from where he extracted ore or bought ore, c) Identify and zero in on all political connections, not only to him but leases from where he extracted or transported ore from.
The SIT also made another significant observation. It indicated that the bank in which 530 fixed deposits of Imran Khan were kept was not quite coming forward to help in the investigations. The banks need to give information regarding the money trail and the movement of funds in and out of these various accounts. It is quite possible that some of this money may have been ploughed back to the mining companies, which allegedly used Khan to transport ore which would not be declared as part of its production.
As always, the law gives Khan the right to defend himself and prove himself clean in the eyes of the law. But when an investigating agency confirms his 530 fixed deposits in just one bank, and with no additional sources of income officially known, the onus lies on Khan to justify these accounts and it is the responsibility of the SIT to track these accounts and discover where these lead to.
The biggest discovery may no longer be the kind of purportedly ill gotten wealth mining traders have made, but the kind of people who allowed them to and benefited from, the kind of money they made.
