PANAJI
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday arrested Congress MLA from Chitradurga in Karnataka, KC Virendra Kumar alias 'Puppy' from Sikkim a day after it launched a crackdown on casinos in Goa, gaming related enterprises and betting rackets across India.
The central agency has also made massive seizures in Indian and foreign currencies, gold, silver and property documents from here and other States.
The raids which began in the wee hours of Friday and were led by the ED’s Bengaluru unit yielded about Rs 12 crore cash, including Rs 1 crore foreign currency, gold jewellery valued at Rs 6 crore, 10 kg of silver, four vehicles and several property documents, some of them traced to Goa.
Apart from Goa, the raids were carried out at 31 locations across India, including Gangtok, Chitradurga, Bengaluru, Hubli, Jodhpur, Mumbai and Goa.
The action has been taken under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in connection with allegedly illegal online and offline betting rackets.
According to the central agency there is suspicion of large-scale laundering of black money and preliminary investigation have revealed the involvement of Veerendra, along with his family members and associates.
In Goa, ED teams, assisted by Goa police, searched five casinos and their offices in Panaji and Calangute. Employees were questioned and their statements were recorded in the presence of witnesses.
Veerendra was arrested in Gangtok on Saturday and produced before the Judicial Magistrate there who granted a 3-day transit remand to bring him before the courts in Bengaluru.
According to the ED, Veerendra is accused of running betting websites such as King567, Raja567, Puppy’s003 and Rathna Gaming. His brother is alleged to be operating business entities from Dubai, including Diamond Softech, TRS Technologies and Prime9Technologies.
The agency said it has also frozen about 17 bank accounts and 2 lockers during the searches, even as some Instagram posts claiming the MLA had the “biggest car collection” in Chitradurga with 003 registration numbe plate are under probe. The ownership and source of funds of these high-end vehicles is being investigated, the sources said.
Among the seizures are a number of international casino membership and reward cards named -- MGM casino, metropolitan casino, Bellagio casino, marina casino, casino jewel, etc.
Multiple credit and debit cards of various banks and membership cards of some 5-star hotels were also seized from various locations which was not informed by the agency.
