Fairplay betting case: Court remands Shah brothers to ED custody till Feb 18

MUMBAI: Brothers Chirag and Chintan Shah remanded to ED custody till Feb 18 in Fairplay money laundering case linked to illegal online betting.

MUMBAI: A special court constituted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) has remanded brothers, Chirag Shah and Chintan Shah, arrested in connection with the Fairplay money laundering case, to the custody of the Enforcement Directorate till February 18. The duo has been accused of assisting the operations of the online betting platform, which illegally broadcasted cricket matches in 2023 and enabled betting on the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Fairplay betting case: Court remands Shah brothers to ED custody till Feb 18

The agency had initiated the money laundering investigation based on an FIR registered by Maharashtra cyber police in April 2023 against Dubai-based Fairplay Sport LLC and others. The FIR was based on a complaint filed by a representative of broadcaster Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd, which alleged that the accused entities had caused the company a loss of over ₹100 crore by illegally broadcasting cricket matches.

The Shah brothers allegedly looked after the technological and software-related aspects of Fairplay. The duo had registered several firms to conduct the operations of Fairplay, which were being operated primarily by a man identified as KL Shah from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, as per the ED officials.

The platform collected its funds through a complex web of 400 bank accounts, which belonged to various shell companies and pharmaceutical firms involved in bogus billings. The funds were then siphoned off to overseas shell entities based in Dubai and Hong Kong.

As per the ED, the funds collected from the users of Fairplay were either layered through multiple layers using hundreds of dummy bank accounts, which were siphoned off to overseas entities, or given back to users as payouts.

The defence maintained that the Bombay high court has quashed the predicate offence, registered by the cyber police. When the duo was produced in the court for the first time on February 14, the defence had argued on the same lines, while opposing the plea. Since the high court order is yet to be uploaded, the court has remanded the duo to the custody of ED till Tuesday. If the predicate offence has been quashed, then the ED case will not be maintainable.