The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached assets worth ₹11.14 crore belonging to former Indian cricketers Suresh Raina and Shikhar Dhawan, in connection to an investigation into the operations of an alleged illegal offshore betting platform, 1xBet. The attachment was made under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The attached assets include mutual fund investments of ₹6.64 crore held in the name of Suresh Raina and an immovable property valued at ₹4.5 crore owned by Shikhar Dhawan. Both players have the option to contest the provisional attachment order before the adjudicating authority.
The ED's investigation is based on multiple FIRs filed by various state police agencies against the operators of 1xBet. The platform is registered in Curacao and describes itself as a globally recognised bookmaker with 18 years in the betting industry and 400,000 users. The ED alleges that 1xBet and its surrogate brands, such as 1xBat and 1xBat Sporting Lines, were involved in promoting and enabling illegal online betting and gambling operations across India. The agency claims that the total money laundering trail linked to the case now exceeds ₹1,000 crore.
The ED has alleged that both Raina and Dhawan "knowingly" entered into endorsement agreements with foreign entities to promote 1xBet and its associated platforms. The payments for these endorsements were allegedly channelled through foreign entities to hide the illicit origin of funds linked to illegal betting activities. The agency considers these assets as proceeds of crime from illegal betting. According to the ED, 1xBet operated in India without authorisation, using surrogate branding and advertisements to target Indian users through social media, online videos, and print media. The payment structure for endorsements involved complex, layered transactions using foreign intermediaries to conceal the illegal source of funds.
The investigation revealed that 1xBet facilitated betting and gambling for Indian users by collecting money through various mule accounts. The ED detected 6,000 mule bank accounts used for illicit transactions and searched four payment gateways routing betting funds. Additionally, they identified 60 bank accounts linked to these platforms that hold deposits of more than ₹4 crore. The probe also revealed that merchants were registered on these gateways without proper KYC verifications and exposed a mismatch between declared business activities and transaction patterns of these merchants.
In addition to Raina and Dhawan, the ED has also questioned other former cricketers, including Yuvraj Singh and Robin Uthappa, as well as actors Sonu Sood, Urvashi Rautela, former Trinamool Congress MP Mimi Chakraborty, and Bengali actor Ankush Hazra, in connection with the case.
