Recently, the Delhi High Court was drawn into the complexities of a massive international cricket-betting network that, according to investigators, had been flourishing quietly for years through hawala channels, foreign websites and high-value login IDs traded on the underground market. The matter, rooted in a 2015 probe, resurfaced when several individuals approached the court challenging the Enforcement Directorate’s decade-old provisional attachment orders issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
The case traces back to September 2015, when the ED attached properties worth Rs.20 crore after uncovering what it described as a Rs.2,400 crore betting empire operating through the UK-based platform Betfair.com. Investigators claimed that the entire setup was being run from a farmhouse near Vadodara, where one of the key players allegedly purchased master and client login IDs for Rs.2.4 crore each and made overseas payments through unauthorised channels. A raid on his residence yielded incriminating documents, valuables and Rs.10 lakh in cash, and further scrutiny revealed that the login IDs had been issued without following any KYC procedure. These findings, according to the agency, formed the basis of the attachment that the petitioners later sought to discredit.
In court, the petitioners contended that the attachments were legally unsustainable and that their conduct did not fall within any scheduled offence under PMLA. They argued that income from betting, even if unlawful, could not automatically be labelled as proceeds of crime unless directly stemming from a scheduled offence. They also questioned the ED’s heavy reliance on recovered documents and the long delay between the original action and the present proceedings. The ED, however, responded that the entire operation was interlinked with offences such as forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy, and that the hawala dealings and unauthorised remittances were central to how the racket functioned. On this basis, the agency maintained that the attached assets were indeed proceeds of crime.
While examining the record, the bench offered a significant clarification on how the PMLA defines “proceeds of crime.” It observed that once property is derived from an act that qualifies as a scheduled offence, the taint does not disappear merely because it is later used in some activity that is not itself a scheduled offence. Even gains from such downstream activity, the court explained, continue to carry the character of proceeds of crime. Using an illustration, the judges noted that if someone acquires property through forgery, cheating or conspiracy and later uses it for an unlicensed real-estate venture, the profits from that venture would still fall under proceeds of crime for the purposes of the PMLA.
Against this backdrop, the court refused to interfere with the ED’s action and rejected the petitions filed by the individuals involved.
Disclaimer: This news/ article includes information received via a syndicated news feed. The original rights remain with the respective publisher.
Picture Source :
