The Enforcement Directorate, the agency investigating online betting in the Indian Premier League, has issued warrants for the arrest of four alleged betting operators, Thane-based Anil Jaisinghani, Jaipur-based brothers Vineet and Rahul Gangwal, and Sukhmunder Singh Sodhi.
At least one of them is alleged to be involved in fixing IPL matches.
On Monday, the ED had chargesheeted seven alleged betting operators in Ahmedabad and Delhi in connection with the scam. They have been identified as Tommy Patel, Kiran Mala, Chirag Parikh, Dharmendra Chauhan from Ahmedabad, and Ritesh, Ankush Bansal and Mukesh Kumar Sharma from Delhi.
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Interestingly, the entire chargesheet, already in court, focuses on the operations of one operator, Tommy Patel.
In the chargesheet, the agency has focused on only four months, November 2014 to March 2015, when the turnover from booking operations reached Rs 2,800 crore and the net profit close to Rs 15 crore.
High-level sources also indicated the role of the management and players of IPL teams was also being probed and their names could figure in a supplementary chargesheet.
According to the investigative agency, the alleged bookies placed bets on the London-based portal, betfair, in violation of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The Bombay High Court in 2010 had banned the online betting platform, but it is still active.
The portal betfair allegedly facilitated the operations of 10 million online betting accounts of users in India between 2013 and March 2015, said an ED official. The ED will issue a letter rogatory to the UK to trace the laundered money. "For people to place bets on the platform they needed to have margin money in their betfair accounts, which was provided via the hawala route," a source said.
The agency is pegging the size of the scam between 2013 and 2015, and the money laundered, in the thousands of crores of rupees. The ED has conducted numerous raids in Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat and Rajasthan to identify betting operators and crack down on the racket.
The probe is being handled by the ED's Ahmedabad office, which is also investigating hawala and money laundering charges.
