The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has frozen and seized assets worth Rs 417 crore in connection with the Mahadev online betting case, officials said on Friday. Allegedly, the company led by Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, conducted its operations from Dubai and used the online book betting application to recruit new users, generate user IDs, and engage in money laundering via a complex network of anonymous bank accounts.
ED has recently conducted wide spread searches against the money laundering networks linked with Mahadev APP in cities like Kolkata, Bhopal, Mumbai etc. and retrieved large amount of incriminating evidences and has frozen/seized proceeds of crime worth Rs 417 crore, the agency has alleged in a statement. The ED investigation has shown that Mahadev Online Book App is run from a central head office in the UAE, officials said. It operates by franchising Panel/Branches to their known associates on 70-30 per cent profit ratio, the ED said.
In the course of further investigation, ED has conducted searches at multiple locations in Bhopal, Mumbai and Kolkata and discovered Sourabh Chandrakar & Ravi Uppal have created an empire for themselves in the UAE. The sudden & illegal riches are being openly flaunted by them. In February 2023, Sourabh Chandrakar got married at RAK, UAE, and for this marriage ceremony, the promoters of Mahadev APP spent around Rs 200 Crore in Cash. Private jets were hired to ferry family members from Nagpur to UAE. Celebrities were hired to perform in the marriage. Wedding planners, dancers, decorators etc were hired from Mumbai and hawala channels were used to make payments in cash. As per the digital evidences gathered by ED, Rs 112 Crore was delivered via hawala to an events management company in the name of M/s R-1 Events Pvt Ltd of Yogesh Popat and Hotel bookings costing Rs 42 Crore were done by paying in cash in AEDs.
Chandrakar has been accused of spending Rs 200 crore on his own wedding which took place in February 2023 in Ras Al Khaimah in UAE. He hired private jets to ferry his family members and friends from Nagpur and paid Rs 42 crore for hotels alone. All payments were made in cash.
The investigative agency, currently probing allegations of money laundering amounting to approximately Rs 5,000 crore linked to the Mahadev Online Book app, has additionally revealed that celebrities were engaged to perform at the wedding of Chandrakar, one of the individuals responsible for managing the online gambling operations from Dubai, along with co-promoter Ravi Uppal.
India Today has reported that Bollywood celebrities like Tiger Shroff and Sunny Leone were present at the wedding, along with Vishal Dadlani, Atif Aslam, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Nushrratt Bharuccha, Kriti Kharbanda, Bharti Singh and Krushna Abhishek.
Extensive hawala operations are conducted on a significant scale to divert the earnings from betting into offshore accounts. Moreover, substantial cash outlays are being made within India for the purpose of advertising betting websites in order to allure new users and individuals interested in becoming franchise partners (panel seekers), as per the statement.