Overview

• The ED has questioned Harbhajan Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Sonu Sood and Urvashi Rautela over their roles in promoting illegal betting platforms.
• Platforms such as 1xBet, FairPlay, Parimatch and Lotus365 are under scrutiny for disguising themselves as skill-based games that rely on rigged algorithms.
• Investigators say QR codes and surrogate names like 1xbat are used to mislead users into unregulated betting sites.
• Preliminary ED findings suggest celebrity endorsements may violate the Information Technology Act, FEMA, PMLA and the Benami Transactions Act.
• The agency has traced over Rs 50 crore in payouts to media outlets and frozen more than 760 mule bank accounts while probing the $100 billion market.