New Delhi: In a major development Tuesday, Ravi Uppal, one of the two main owners of the Mahadev online betting app — under probe by the Enforcement Directorate for alleged money laundering worth thousands of crores — was arrested in Dubai by the local police based on a request made by the Indian agency, ThePrint has learnt.
According to a source in ED, the agency received a communication from Dubai confirming Uppal’s arrest and the process to get him back to India has been initiated.
“A red notice was issued against Uppal on our request and now he has been arrested in Dubai. The process to extradite him has started,” the source said. “The process to bring back a fugitive from Dubai is much faster than [from] other countries so we are hoping that the process will be completed very soon,” the source added.
According to the source, efforts to locate Uppal’s partner, Sourabh Chandrakar, are also on.
“Everyone knows that Chandrakar is also in Dubai. The two men had been running their operations from Dubai,” the source claimed.
ED sources claimed that according to their probe, Chandrakar spent Rs 200 crore on his lavish wedding in the UAE, where his family members arrived in private jets from Nagpur. They further alleged that wedding planners, dancers and decorators were hired from Mumbai and hawala channels were used to make payments in cash.
According to the sources, the probe agency has digital evidence to show that Rs 112 crore was allegedly delivered via hawala to an event management company for Chandrakar’s wedding. Hotel bookings worth Rs 42 crore were done for the wedding by paying in cash in UAE Dirhams.
ED sources told ThePrint that Chandrakar and Uppal have created an empire for themselves in the UAE and the illegal riches earned by them through the betting app are being openly flaunted by them.
The case
The Mahadev app case pertains to an alleged illegal betting platform that involves thousands of crores stashed in bank accounts opened using purported fake identities, an “intricate network of shell companies, call centres operating from outside India, and a robust hawala system”.
Sources told ThePrint that the Mahadev Online Book is a mobile app that provides a platform for alleged illegal betting, on live games such as poker, other card games and chance games, besides cricket, badminton, tennis and football, among others. It also allows visitors to play card games like teen patti, poker and ‘Dragon Tiger’, among others, in addition to virtual cricket. The mobile app also gives visitors the option to bet on elections in India.
According to police sources, Chandrakar and Uppal are originally from Bhilai, Chhattisgarh and it is alleged that they built a customer base of thousands, illegally amassing over 5,000 crores in the process, which is regularly sent abroad through hawala channels and then used to pay kickbacks to stakeholders in India.
The ED suspects that the complex operation is being run with the help of senior IPS officers, other civil servants including officials in the chief minister’s office (CMO) in Chhattisgarh.
In May this year, the ED also implicated former Chattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel in the case, sparking a controversy.
ED claimed to have received an input that a large amount of cash had been moved in Chhattisgarh by the promoters of Mahadev APP in relation to last month’s assembly elections. Following this the agency carried out searches at Hotel Triton and another location in Bhilai and nabbed Asim Das, who was allegedly carrying the cash sent from UAE and was to have delivered it for election expenses of the ruling Congress Party.
ED claimed that Das admitted that the seized funds were arranged by the Mahadev APP promoters to be delivered to one politician “Baghel” for the upcoming election expenses in the state of Chhattisgarh. The EV claimed to have seized Rs 5.30 crore in these searches and also claimed that they discovered some benami (proxy) bank accounts of Mahadev APP with balance amounts of Rs 15.59 Crore, which have also been frozen.
The allegations were denied by Baghel. In a statement, the former CM had accused the BJP of wanting to “fight elections by using central agencies like ED, IT” and that “an ugly attempt is made to spoil my image” just before Chhattisgarh Assembly elections.
He said, “Everyone also understands that this is being done by weaponising the ED. In fact, the BJP is now contesting elections with the help of ED and is using ED to defame me”.
Over 2000 bank accounts, bogus KYCs
On the scale of this operation, the ED source quoted above told ThePrint that “there are over 2,000 bank accounts that have been opened on bogus KYCs to hold the money” that is made from users of the app. “These accounts are operated only for a few months and are then closed, following which new ones are opened using identities of different people.”
The source further said that the app’s promoters “lure people (by) promising good returns”, adding that the agency has reason to suspect that “kickbacks amounting to Rs 25 lakh a month are also being received by government servants in Chhattisgarh”.
In this case, the ED had initiated a money laundering probe based on 75 FIRs registered to date by the Chhattisgarh Police under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections pertaining to cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy, besides relevant sections of the Gambling Act. According to sources in the state police, similar FIRs were registered against partners Chandrakar and Uppal in Visakhapatnam, Goa and Ahmedabad over the past one year.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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