In a big blow, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Saturday summoned tech giants Google and Meta (formerly Facebook) in the ongoing probe on illegal betting applications on the Internet. July 21 will be the date on which the two companies will be requested to enquire. As reported by the ED, Google and Meta gave their platforms and best advertising opportunity to advertise betting apps that are deemed to have engaged in major financial crimes, such as money laundering and hawala transactions.
According to the ED, these companies made these apps so reachable and popular since they helped promote and advertise them. This further led to a high rate of illegal gambling networks all over the nation. The probe has revealed that a lot of these platforms pretended to be classifying themselves as skills-based gaming application when they were essentially running underground betting operations. Such business dealings have been found to rake in crores of rupees in black money, which went outside the country in hawala channels.
As part of this investigation, ED has also filed cases against 29 stars and social media stars. Such big names as Prakash Raj, Rana Daggubati, and Vijay Deverakonda have even been accused of promoting these apps and receiving massive payments to do so. The Mahadev betting app scam would cost in excess of 6000 crores in itself. A number of Bollywood celebrities have already been accused of the issue.
Moreover, the agency is looking into the Fairplay IPL Betting App that unlawfully broadcast and streamed Indian Premier League (IPL) matches and enabled unlawful bets throughout the tournament. This caused a great loss of finances to the official broadcaster, Viacom18. There are also several Indian celebrities who are under the scanner in this case.
The summons of Google and Meta by the ED is a major step to crack down on the digital platform that supposedly facilitates financial crimes by encouraging the use of illegal betting and gambling apps.
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