Overview
- Delivering a 36-page judgment on November 24–25, the court dismissed petitions against the Enforcement Directorate’s provisional attachment orders issued in 2015.
- The bench held that profits from downstream activities like illegal betting are ‘proceeds of crime’ when traceable to property obtained through scheduled offences under Section 2(1)(u).
- The court said ‘Super Master’ login IDs used to run the network are intangible digital assets that qualify as ‘property’ under Section 2(1)(v).
- ED’s attachments of movable and immovable assets worth about Rs 20 crore were sustained, with the court finding sufficient ‘reason to believe’ and a clear nexus to money-laundering.
- The case stems from a 2014–15 betting and hawala network run via Betfair.com, where IDs allegedly bought for Rs 2.4 crore each without KYC enabled activity ED estimates at roughly Rs 2,400 crore.