BENGALURU: The Special Investigation Team (SIT), which is probing the Lokayukta corruption case, is yet to start inquiry to ascertain the amount of money extorted by members of the syndicate that was running the racket and where had they invested it.
Sources in SIT said that the team has decided to launch an inquiry in this direction. “During investigations till now, we collected information about how the racket was run, who are the gang members and from whom they had extorted money, etc. But we are yet to look into the money involved in the scam,” an official said.
“We have collected basic information on how they extorted money from officials. In fact, the accused themselves are not sure of how much money they had extorted. Also, they have not maintained any documents related to the money extorted. But they have confessed that huge sums of money had exchanged hands in every single case,” the official said.
“V. Bhaskar, an accused, has been remanded to judicial custody. A plan has to be made to probe the money trail. The major hindrance is that only two officials have filed complaints so far. We believe that even the officials, who had paid money to the accused, may not come on record during the probe as they would fear that would land them in trouble,” the official said.
“The investigations have revealed that the accused have made good use of the ill-gotten money, except Ashwin. Some of them have invested in property and finance business through their friends. But Ashwin spent money on lavish lifestyle and has not even paid salaries of his employees looking after his used car business. He has many cheque bounce cases against him,” the official said.
