Representative image
NEW DELHI: Justifying its decision to ban online money games by bringing Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, Centre on Tuesday told Supreme Court that the unregulated online gaming sector had links with terror financing and money laundering, but said it was premature to examine validity of the law as it had not yet been notified after President’s assent.In an affidavit filed in court on a batch of petitions challenging validity of the law, the Centre told the court that the Act was meant to protect individuals, especially youth and vulnerable populations, from the adverse social, economic, psychological and privacy related impacts of online money games and to safeguard the integrity of financial systems and security and sovereignty of the country.”Unchecked expansion of online money gaming has been linked to financial fraud, money laundering, tax evasion, and in some cases, the financing of terrorism, thereby posing threats to national security, public order and integrity of the state… There is enough material and data that indicates the unregulated online gaming sector has links with terror financing and money laundering, yet again establishing the exclusive compete-nce of Parliament to regulate the same,” the affidavit said.It said data pertaining to money laundering and terror financing links to online money games were classified but agreed to place the same in SC in a sealed cover. “An analysis of data from Suspicious Transaction Reports and Cross Border Wire Tra-nsfer Reports revealed online gaming companies registered in small island countries where user accounts were registered with Indian banks in the name of proxy persons. The money collected from the users has been remitted out of India by misdeclaring purposes of remittances,” the affidavit said.
