MUMBAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached assets worth ₹91.82 crore, in the form of bank balances and properties, as part of its inter-state money-laundering investigation into the alleged betting operations of online apps /platforms Mahadev Online Book (MOB) and skyexchange.com. The assets of MOB’s alleged co-promoter, Saurabh Chandrakar, were also attached by the agency.
ED officials said on Wednesday that the latest attachments included bank balances worth ₹74.28 crore held in the names of two firms, Perfect Plan Investment LLC and Exim General Trading-GZCO, which allegedly belong to Chandrakar and two other individuals, Anil Kumar Agarwal and Vikas Chhaparia. The two firms were allegedly used by the trio to conceal and project the proceeds of crime (PoC) in the case as untainted investments.
The attachments also included properties worth Rs. 17.5 crore allegedly belonging to Gagan Gupta, a close associate of Hari Shankar Tibrewal, who is the owner of skyexchange.com. The attached properties included high-value real-estate units and other assets held in the names of Gupta’s family members, which were found to have been acquired in cash from the case’s PoC.
The investigation revealed that the two apps, among others, allegedly generated huge PoC which was laundered through a complex web of ‘benami’ (proxy) bank accounts. The MOB app was allegedly created to facilitate multiple illegal betting websites/ mobile apps, and the websites were rigged in such a manner as to make all players lose money eventually. Thousands of crores were collected and distributed in a predetermined profit-sharing manner this way.
The probe also found that fabricated and stolen KYC details were used to open multiple bank accounts to conceal the origin of the illegal betting proceeds. These transactions were neither accounted for nor brought into the tax net, according to the ED.
ED officials said that the PoC generated through the illegal betting was transferred outside India through hawala channels, trade-based money-laundering transactions and the use of crypto-assets, which were subsequently routed back and invested in the Indian stock market through Foreign Portfolio Investments (FPI). FPI refers to investments made by foreign entities in a country’s financial markets.
The investigators also detected a sophisticated ‘cashback’ scheme wherein the FPI entities invested heavily in Indian listed companies and in return, got 30% to 40% of the investments back in cash from the promoters of the companies. Gupta has been identified as the alleged beneficiary of at least ₹98 crore from such transactions, involving entities like Salasar Techno Engineering Ltd and Tiger Logistics Ltd.
So far, the ED has conducted searches at more than 175 premises across several states, including Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, and seized/ frozen /attached assets worth around Rs. 2,600 crore in the case. It has arrested 13 persons, while 74 individuals and entities have been named as accused in five chargesheets submitted so far.
Based on the ED’s request, Interpol had in 2023 issued Red Corner Notices against MOB’s alleged promoters Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, who are suspected to be abroad.