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The problem with not allowing imms to play morts is that along with losing the feel for what makes the game fun, they also lose the motivation to work for the mud. After all, few imms come about just to kill time, it's usually because they've gotten so involved (through playing) that they apply and join. And it's a nice way to enjoy your creation.
On our mud, we strive to make sure that not only do imms not cheat, they also do not give the appearance of cheating. We also log most imm commands. Our head admin is also very much no-nonsense about cheating, having denied several imms personally for cheating over the years. It is largely a reputation issue, since the server logs aren't available to players, but since he has the server logs, he knows the truth. Thus whenever accusations come up, he has one reply "give me specific evidence -- times, dates, what happened, etc." since he can look it up. Without exception, however, all the player accusations have been bogus, made just to make the imms look bad, after the player in question has been caught cheating himself (often multiple times) -- one particularly humorous example on our forums is that after the head admin made the "get specific" reply, the player could only respond with profanity. The only times imms have been caught cheating were due to other imms catching them. So treat player accusations with a grain of salt. We keep a distinct line between imms and players though, so it really depends on the connection with groups of players. On our mud, the higher-level an imm is, the less connection he has with groups of players, so it's only among the lower imms that we have to worry about them helping their friends illegally. Not so coincidentally, they also have less imm skills.
In the end, I think vigilance (generally via logs) and making clear that cheating is not tolerated is the best defense you have against alleged cheating.
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