ED grills Suresh Raina for 8 hours in unlawful betting apps probe
The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday questioned former India cricketer Suresh Raina for greater than eight hours in its cash laundering probe towards unlawful on-line betting platforms.
Raina, who was seen interacting with the ED workers and CISF personnel exterior the company’s workplace, marked his attendance at 11 am, and left round 8 pm, PTI reported.
The company additionally recorded Raina’s assertion underneath the prevention of cash laundering act (PMLA) for endorsing a sports activities betting app, which was concerned in unlawful practices.
Raina allegedly undertook sure endorsements for the betting app. The ED interrogated the previous Indian cricketer to grasp his hyperlinks with the app, any endorsement charge which he might need acquired, and the mode of communication used between each events, PTI quoted sources as saying.
In the meantime, an ED officer mentioned that “one other former Indian cricketer has additionally been requested to seem earlier than the company”, with out naming the person.
The company, which is asking a number of celebrities with hyperlinks to betting apps for interrogation, had additionally summoned representatives of Google and Meta for questioning as a part of the probe.
The ED is investigating a number of such instances which contain unlawful betting apps, and has additionally questioned tech companies and media homes’ representatives who’ve acquired cash within the type of ads from them.
The apps underneath the scanner have allegedly duped a number of individuals and traders of crores of rupees, whereas additionally evading taxes.
There are round 22 crore Indians utilizing such on-line betting apps, with half of them being common customers, in response to PTI. The web betting app market in India is value over USD 100 billion, PTI quoted specialists as saying.
In relation to on-line betting, the union ministry of data and broadcasting had, in 2023, issued 4 advisories to newspapers, broadcast information channels, leisure channels, publishers of on-line information and present affairs content material, on-line commercial intermediaries, and social media platforms to not promote these platforms.
Nonetheless, regardless of the advisories, celebrities from the leisure and sports activities fields continued to endorse such apps, with a few of them now being underneath the ED scanner, in response to an officer.
