Raipur:

Chhattisgarh’s Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) has booked former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel and others in connection with the Mahadev online betting scam based on an FIR submitted by the education ministry, officials said on Sunday File a case.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which has been probing the money laundering case related to the Mahadev app for over a year, has claimed in the past that its probe revealed the involvement of several senior politicians and bureaucrats in Chhattisgarh, including two of the state’s main The promoter of the application comes from.

According to the ED, the proceeds of crime in this case are estimated to be around Rs 6,000 crore.

A senior EOW official said: “The ED has been investigating the case and based on a report submitted to the state’s Economic Offenses Wing/Anti-Corruption Bureau, an FIR was registered against Baghel and others at the EOW police station on March 4 .”

He said senior Congress leader Baghel and the app’s promoters Ravi Uppal, Saurabh Chandrakar, Shubham Soni and Anil Kumar Agrawal and 14 others have been named as accused in the FIR.

He said a number of bureaucrats, police officers, Secret Service agents and other unidentified individuals were also charged in the case (who were not named).

The case has been registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating) and 471 (use of forged document as authentic), and Prevention of Corruption (Amendment), 2018 Act, officials said.

Citing the ED report, the FIR stated that Mahadev Book App promoters Uppal, Chandrakar, Soni and Agrawal created a real-time online betting platform and were addicted to betting through social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook and Telegram.

Promoters create different platforms to conduct illegal online betting practices through panel operators/affiliates. They allegedly retained 70% to 80% of the illegal proceeds and distributed the remaining funds to panel operators/branch operators.

The FIR alleged that promoters and panel operators earned around Rs 450 crore every month through online betting apps since the lockdown was imposed in 2020 (in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic).

In order to trade the illegally obtained funds, the promoters and panel operators of Mahadev Book App opened bank accounts based on false documents and operated hundreds of bank accounts on commission using the funds obtained from betting. The panel operators allegedly transferred illegal funds to promoters in the UAE through various bank accounts.

App promoters spend a lot of money advertising betting sites. For this purpose, annual star-studded events were also organized in which celebrities participated by paying them illegal funds obtained from gambling, the FIR said.

Illicit funds obtained by app promoters through online betting were allegedly invested in numerous companies, shell companies, stock markets and cryptocurrencies.

The FIR said a similar betting platform called Sky Exchange was run by Hari Shankar Tibrewal, who was associated with Mahadev Online Book, and ED had attached assets worth about Rs 580 crore.

To prevent legal action against illegal online gambling, the promoters of Mahadev Book App allegedly offered huge protection payments to multiple police officers, administrative officials and influential politicians.

The FIR alleged that hawala operators were used to arrange and distribute protection money and policemen/employees were also used as couriers.

Several police officers, administrative officials and influential politicians abused their power to obtain illegal assets in the form of protection payments. The ED is said to have placed provisional attachment on many immovable properties.

During last year’s Chhattisgarh Assembly elections, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, raised eyebrows over the Mahadev app case. as a target.

Baghel called the Education Department’s actions in the Mahadev gambling app case a “political conspiracy” and accused the federal agency of acting at the behest of its “political masters.”

So far, the Education Department has arrested nine people in this case.

The ED has so far filed two chargesheets in the Raipur court in the case, including charges against Chandrakar and Uppal. It had earlier conducted several raids in connection with the case.

“The operations of Mahadev Online Book are conducted in Dubai through the granting of franchise groups/branches to its known associate companies with a profit margin of 70-30 per cent,” the ministry said.

“The main promoter of MOB is also a partner/promoter of several such online betting books such as Reddy Anna, Fairplay, etc. The large-scale hawala business is conducted to transfer betting proceeds to offshore accounts,” it claimed.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)