The Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed an 8,887-page chargesheet before a special PMLA court in Raipur on Friday in the Mahadev app betting case. The complaint named 14 accused individuals, including the Mahadev app kingpin, Saurabh Chandrakar.
According to the chargesheet, Chandrakar's wedding in February 2023 was Yogesh Popat’s (the event organizer) second assignment with the Mahadev app owner.
The total budget for the wedding amounted to ₹144 crore. Popat was contacted by a close associate of Chandrakar in October 2022 to handle the design, planning, and execution of the wedding. In December 2022, he presented the wedding concept to Chandrakar, who chose the theme for the event.
According to Popat's statement, Chandrakar didn't want to pay the 18 percent GST money to the Indian government. As a result, he decided to settle all the linked marriage event accounts in cash and assigned the responsibility to his close associate, Vikas Chhaparia, also known as Chiku.
Investing hawala funds into Indian stock market
According to the chargesheet, Chhaparia is the person who handles Mahadev app's hawala money and invests the hawala funds in the Indian stock market, as well as land deals on behalf of the kingpin, Chandrakar.
According to Popat, on the instructions of Chandrakar, he received Rs 106 crore in cash on three different occasions. He received 65 crore in Dubai and 42 crore in India via Hawala. All the payments were managed by Vikas Chhaparia@Chiku.
According to Popat's statement, one more gala dinner event was organized by Chandrakar at the World Trade Centre in Dubai on September 18 2023. Many celebrities were supposed to attend, which he was supposed to handle, but it was canceled due to the breaking news that Chandrakar had been detained by Sri Lankan authorities.
Celebrities misled into attending success party
According to the chargesheet, it was also revealed that in connection to celebrities' performance and appearance, ED found that the celebrities refused to perform or appear at the Mahadev app success party in September 2022. Chandrakar and their associates attempted to call celebrities to the Mahadev app success party event by misleading them.
In a statement to ED, Abhijit Chaudhary, who is engaged in business events and artist coordination, stated that he was the coordinator of the Mahadev app success party held on September 18, 2022, in Dubai. Two individuals approached him to hire celebrities for the Mahadev app success party event. However, the celebrities refused to appear or perform at the Mahadev app party. The two individuals, named Devang Shah and Karan Ramani, instructed him to remove the reference to the Mahadev app and instead approach the celebrities in the name of Dubai-based Muskan Management Company. The celebrities were approached under the name of Muskan Event Management and were given ₹10 lakhs in advance to attend the September 2022 party, with the remaining payment in cash.
