Rs 2,400 crore cricket-betting ‘scam’: Delhi HC says ED can attach property from illegal betting money as proceeds of crime

ED started probing the case after the police in Gujarat’s Vadodara lodged an FIR against four people from the state.

Delhi High Court Upholds ED's Rs 20 Crore Attachment in 2015 Cricket Betting Scam.(File)

The Delhi High Court Monday rejected a bunch of petitions filed by several accused in an alleged multi-crore international cricket betting scam from 2015, challenging the provisional attachment orders made over a decade ago by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

In September 2015, ED issued a provisional attachment order, attaching moveable and immovable properties valued at approximately Rs 20 crore of the accused, and also issued a show-cause notice in October 2015 for money laundering under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The accused challenged both before the Delhi HC.

While dismissing the pleas, the Delhi High Court held that even if cricket betting is not a separate predicate offence under which the PMLA prosecution can be initiated, profits from such activity remain untraceable. and would thus constitute proceeds of crime.

The Division Bench of Justices Anil Kshetarpal and Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar, while refusing to set aside the provisional attachment order and subsequent proceedings, held that the designated/authorised officer, making the attachment, “possessed sufficient and cogent material to form the requisite reason to believe” and “was not mechanical or predicated on mere suspicion.”

The court also held that the “PAO also indicates the existence of a clear nexus between the material collected and the inference drawn” regarding the involvement of the accused in the process of money-laundering, concluding that there is “no infirmity in the issuance of the PAO or the consequential SCN.”

Modus operandi

ED, which has pegged the proceeds of crime at Rs 2,400 crore, began probing the case after the police in Gujarat’s Vadodara lodged a First Information Report (FIR) against four people from the state, all partners in the partnership firm Maruti Ahmedabad.

The modus operandi included betting on IPL matches through a London-based online platform betfair.com, banned in India in 2010, where the accused would buy a super master login credentials, and in turn would distribute master login IDs for use by individual bettors.

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According to ED’s allegations, the accused earned the proceeds of crime “through illegal betting activities, by placing and accepting bets on various matches played during (2014-2015), involving bookies and punters located in India, Dubai, Pakistan and other nations across the world.”

“It is also important to note that, even if a downstream activity, such as conducting betting, is not a scheduled offence, profits generated from such activity remain traceable to the original tainted property, especially when the said downstream activity is a final manifestation of a chain of criminality, intricately interwoven with multiple preceding criminal acts, any profit derived therefrom clearly constituting ‘proceeds of crime’ within the contours of the PMLA,” the Delhi High Court said.

“Therefore, any benefit indirectly derived by the usage of super master login IDs would constitute proceeds of crime… Even if cricket betting is not a separate predicate offence, non-availability of the super master IDs, which was a culmination of a series of criminal activities related to a scheduled offence, would have made the international cricket betting racket non-functional.”

Among those accused in the case and who were before the Delhi HC were two international bookies identified as Girish Patel alias Tommy, from Unjha in North Gujarat, and Kiran Thakkar alias Mala, a resident of Maninagar. Delhi-based cricket bookies Mukesh Kumar Sharma alias ‘Mukesh Delhi’ and another accused in the case also filed the plea.