New Delhi. Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to its Mumbai office on Friday in connection with its investigation into the Mahadev Books money laundering case. Sources gave this information on Wednesday.
The development comes in the wake of several Bollywood celebrities attending the wedding ceremony of Saurabh Chandrakar, one of the promoters of Mahadev Books, in the UAE, a source said.
It is alleged that many celebrities endorsed the mobile gaming application of Mahadev Books in exchange for huge sums of money.
Chandrakar’s lavish wedding ceremony was also attended by several Bollywood celebrities and details of hotel payments and transportation expenses were found by the financial probe agency during searches conducted last month, the source said.
It is alleged that Mahadev Books spent around Rs 200 crore on the wedding ceremony program in Dubai, including hiring private jets to fly family members from Nagpur to UAE.
The ED investigation also found that celebrities were hired to perform at the wedding. Wedding planners, dancers, decorators etc. were called from Mumbai and hawala channels were used to make cash payments.
The ED said, as per digital evidence collected by it, Rs 112 crore were given through hawala to an event management company – Yogesh Popat’s R-1 Events Pvt Ltd and hotel bookings were done by paying Rs 42 crore in cash. Was.
It was also said that during searches of the premises of Popat, Mithilesh and other organizers, evidence related to receipt of hawala money of Rs 112 crore came to light.
“Subsequently, searches were conducted at Angadia named by Popat and resulted in seizure of unaccounted cash amounting to Rs 2.37 crore,” the ED claimed.
The ED further said that many celebrities are supporting these betting entities and carrying out their operations in return for hefty fees through suspicious transactions, but ultimately the payments are made from the income of online betting.
The agency also conducted searches at the premises of Dheeraj Ahuja and Vishal Ahuja’s Rapid Travels in Bhopal. The ED said the company was responsible for the entire ticketing operations for Mahadev APP promoters, family, business associates and even celebrities who were endorsing betting websites like Fairplay.com, RedDyna APP, Mahadev APP.
It was claimed, “The illegal cash earnings from the betting panels were cleverly deposited by the Ahuja brothers with the main ticket providers and the wallet balances were used to book domestic and international tickets. Rapid Travels conducts most of the Mahadev Group events. “I was involved in making travel arrangements for the annual star-studded event held in the UAE in the month of September.”
The ED said it has successfully identified other key players involved in the money laundering operation of Mahadev Online Book App.
“It was found that Kolkata-based Vikas Chhaparia was handling all hawala related operations for Mahadev APP,” the agency said. ED conducted searches at his known premises and those of his associates like Govid Kedia. It was found that with the help of Kedia, Chaparia was also making huge investments in the Indian stock market through his entities – Perfect Plan Investments LLP, Exim General Trading FZCO and Techpro IT Solutions LLC.”
“Accordingly, cash and other security holdings amounting to Rs 236.3 crore in the name of entities beneficially owned by Chhaparia have been seized by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 (PMLA).”
The agency also said that assets worth Rs 160 crore in Kedia’s demat holdings have also been seized by the ED. Indian currency worth Rs 18 lakh, gold and jewelery worth Rs 13 crore were also seized as a result of the search at the Kedia premises.
The financial probe agency had said in a statement that the ED recently conducted extensive searches against the money laundering network linked to Mahadev App in cities like Kolkata, Bhopal, Mumbai etc and recovered huge amount of incriminating evidence and the proceeds of crime amount to Rs 417 crore. Have confiscated.
