NEW DELHI: Profits from cricket betting will be treated as “proceeds of crime” under the money laundering law if the money is found to be linked to a criminal activity defined as a scheduled offence under PMLA, Delhi high court has ruled.Justices Kshetarpal and Shankar dismissed a batch of petitions filed by several individuals involved in an alleged Rs 2,400-crore international cricket betting racket, dating to 2015, who had challenged the provisional attachment orders issued over a decade ago by ED.In Sept 2015, ED attached movable and immovable properties valued at Rs 20 crore belonging to the accused and issued a show-cause notice in Oct 2015 for money laundering. The action was initiated in connection with large-scale hawala transactions and illegal international cricket betting operations conducted through a UK-based website, Betfair.com.ED alleged that the operations were run from a farmhouse in a village in Vadodara. The attachment followed a raid on the residence of one of the accused, who was allegedly acting as a conduit in the betting network. He had reportedly bought master and client login IDs for a betting platform at Rs 2.4 crore each and made payments abroad through unauthorised channels. The agency found these IDs were issued without the KYC process. ED recovered incriminating documents, valuables and Rs 10 lakh in cash. The petitioners challenged these actions in HC.The bench observed, “If a person acquires any immovable property through acts of forgery, cheating, and criminal conspiracy, and thereafter utilises such property for a downstream activity – such as conducting an unlicensed real-estate business, which is not a scheduled offence – the proceeds generated from the latter activity nonetheless constitute ‘proceeds of crime’ under PMLA.”
