The Enforcement Directorate has filed a supplementary chargesheet in the Mahadev app betting case, adding five accused and pegging the estimate worth of the scam at Rs 6,000 crore. The 1,800-page document is accompanied by four hard disks. The special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court is expected to take cognisance of the charge sheet on January 10.
The chargesheet has added five accused to the case — suspended constable Bhim Singh Yadav, cash courier Aseem Das, Shubham Soni, Anil Aggarwal, and Rohit Gulati.
In the chargesheet, Bhim Yadav, who is a suspended constable, has been mentioned for his alleged role of collecting protection money and liasoning for Mahadev betting apps. During the investigation, the agency recovered Rs 5.39 crore worth cash from Aseem Das.
Shubham Soni, who is based out of Dubai, was handling operations for Ravi Uppal and Saurabh Chandrakar, the two main promoters of the app. The two were recently detained in Dubai on the basis of an Interpol red notice issued against them at the behest of the ED.
Anil Aggarwal has been mentioned as a promoter of the Mahadev app. He, too, is based out of Dubai. Similarly, Rohit Gulati operates out of Dubai and was working as account manager.
The chargesheet makes further references to 19 other people who were arrested from Visakhapatnam. It mentions one Prathik Mishra, who, with assistance of the arrested accused, was allegedly running a call centre for illegal sports betting websites belonging to Mahadev app operators.
Of the arrested persons, some were working under Mishra who used to visit them every 15 days and hand over supplies. These people were allegedly collecting money from the punters who intended to place the bets and deposited the money in bank accounts shared through WhatsApp groups.
These persons, as per the choice of punters, placed their bets on websites like Tiger Exchange, Gold365, laser247, cricketbuzz.com, play247.win, skylexchange.com and cricketbet9.comand.
The money earned through betting apps was then allegedly used to operate 60 illegal offshore gambling websites after Mahadev app was blocked by the government. The apps that were being operated include Lotus365, FairPlay, Redy Anna, Laser Book, Tiger Exchange, BetBook247 and Gold365
Investigation reportedly revealed that the accused had opened accounts in various branches of Canara Bank in the name of various persons and used these bank accounts in transactions of the Mahadev app. The betting syndicate allegedly generated proceeds of crime worth Rs 450 crore per month. Professional international hawala operators working in Mumbai and Gujarat would get these funds transferred to Dubai.
Using this money, Chandrakar and Uppal acquired assets in their own name and in the name of their associates in UAE and other countries, the chargesheet said, adding that they were living in palatial houses and had acquired passports of other countries like Vanuatu.
The document also mentions villas in Dubai being used for running call centres for Mahadev app. These villas are located at Al Barsha in Dubai, where 50-70 people reside, the document said.
As part of the investigation, ED has so far searched 80 premises across Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Bihar. The agency has seized cash worth Rs 10.42 crore, valuables worth Rs 14.9 crore and frozen assets worth Rs 541.7 crore.
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