The Enforcement Directorate, along with the Gujarat Police, conducted searches in multiple states on Monday (August 19) as part of a money-laundering investigation linked to alleged unauthorised streaming of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 matches by a "betting" website. The federal agency said in a statement that 20 premises in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru (Karnataka), Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) and Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) were covered by its officials and those from the Ahmedabad cyber police department in the case against the "magicwin" web portal.
ED case under PMLA
The ED case, which was filed under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), stems from an Ahmedabad Police FIR, which stated that a website -- magicwin.games -- had unauthorisedly hosted, streamed and broadcast matches during the world cup.
The broadcast rights for the tournament were given to Star India Private Limited by the International Cricket Council (ICC), the ED said.
“magicwin is a website compatible with any Internet browser on mobile phones, Smart TVs and computers, through which the company's paid content is broadcast and allows viewers to watch matches for free,” the agency added.
The portal "illegally" broadcast the T20 world cup matches between Canada and Ireland on June 7 and India and Pakistan on June 9 through a link, streaming the content from OTT platform Disney+Hotstar, causing "huge" financial losses to the company authorised to broadcast the tournament, the ED claimed.
"The website indulged in illegal activities like betting on live cricket matches and other games. The broadcast of live matches of the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024 was without any subscription fee and done in order to tempt the gullible people to bet on their website," it alleged.
ED makes seizures
During the raids, the ED said "incriminating" records and digital devices, apart from Rs 30 lakh in cash, were seized. Rs 2 crore was frozen and some crypto wallets containing deposits to the tune of Rs 12 crore were identified, it said.
The agency has instructed the crypto exchanges to not "liquidate" the cryptocurrencies from their wallets. "The outcome in the case during search proceedings and consequent investigation is an example of multi-agency coordination in a complex online crime involving multiple domains," the ED said.
(With PTI inputs)
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