The money laundering charges are related to the arrest of Saumya Singh Rathore and Paavan Nanda, the co-founders of the online real-money gaming platform WinZO. On Wednesday, the two got arrested in Bengaluru after being interrogated over a number of hours at the zonal office of the agency. Reportedly, the news agencies cited that the ED arrested them and accused them of breaching the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The case is based on an ED investigation on how the customer funds were handled following the Union Government imposing a nationwide ban on real-money gambling (RMGs) effective August 22, 2025. The agency alleged in a statement made earlier this week that WinZO had illegally held close to ₹43 crore of the money of its users. These were the funds which according to the ED were supposed to be refunded as soon as the ban was reached. Rather, money was kept held by the company.
The ED statement pointed out that even after the Union Government banned RMGs, the company still retains a figure of 43 crore without refunding to the gamers/customers. Researchers assume that the unproviding of funds can be tied to the bigger financial anomalies regarding the work of the platform.
Who is Paavan Nanda?
Paavan Nanda is an iconic business person who is 38 and operates within the online games and technology start-up space in India. He co-created WinZO, which is a platform that provides a real-money game in many formats. When under his leadership, WinZO grew outside India and established operations in Brazil, the United States, and Germany and established itself as a global player in the gaming industry.
Prior to WinZO, Nanda also worked in other tech startups of high growth and is considered one of the top personalities in the gaming startup arena in India. His arrest is a major development in the crackdown on real-money gaming companies that had been tightened by the government.
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