India’s online gaming industry has turned into the new gold rush, drawing in not just corporate giants such as Ambani and Adani, or Kavin Bharti Mittal, son of telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal, but even fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim. Their playbook looks strikingly alike: deep ties with cricket and the BCCI, siphoning dirty money through illegal betting, routing payments via cryptocurrency and black routes and often dipping into match-fixing.
Following the New Delhi Post exposé titled “Dream11—Devil of Fraud: Inside a Billion Dollar Money Laundering Empire”, in its inaugural issue in July, the government enacted the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025. Marketed as a crackdown on betting and gambling platforms, the legislation officially aims to ban online gaming outright.
But the story does not end with the new legislation. In fact, further investigation by New Delhi Post has found that too many powerful players are sitting inside the gaming ecosystem—unpunished, untouched and unperturbed. That raises a crucial question: Is the law designed to dismantle the nexus, or is it a carefully drafted shield protecting the powerful players entrenched in the system and violating all rules in the book?
New Delhi Post has uncovered that corruption and irregularities in India’s gaming industry run far deeper than Dream11. The investigation reveals that some of the country’s most powerful figures—from business magnates Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, to Kavin Bharti Mittal, son of telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal, and even fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim—are entangled in the gaming nexus.
At its core lies a web of money laundering, tax evasion, black money round-tripping, cricket-betting nexuses, offshore havens, and links to organised crime. India’s online gaming industry, as a whole, operates a parallel financial system alongside the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), one that remains unchecked despite the passage of the new law.
Major players operate almost in the same fashion: they have direct or indirect ties with cricketing bodies, particularly the BCCI; siphon white money from ordinary bettors; route funds through cryptocurrency or shadow channels; and, in several cases, are involved in illegal betting and match-fixing.
Among the companies in the dock, Dream11 has, of course, emerged as the most visible flashpoint. New Delhi Post has already exposed that the fantasy sports giant is a textbook case of money laundering.
The government noted the issues but stopped short of taking legal action. To date, neither the Enforcement Directorate (ED) nor any investigative agency has filed an FIR against Dream11. This silence is even more perplexing given that New Delhi Post’s exposé linked names like Anand Jain, a figure associated with Reliance Industries and a close aide of Mukesh Ambani. Why should the promoters and directors linked to Dream11 not be arrested?
The financial discrepancies are glaring. According to documents cited by New Delhi Post, a company with just ₹1.03 crore in capital was valued at ₹5.62 lakh per share, giving it an astonishing equity valuation of ₹58,876.64 crore. While these figures appeared on Indian balance sheets, the real control rested with Dream Sports Inc., registered on foreign soil in Delaware, USA.
New Delhi Post revealed that the founder, Harsh Jain, who is also the son of Anand Jain, once held 99.99% ownership of Dream11 India, but quietly transferred the entire share to Dream11 Inc. (which later changed its name to Dream Sports Inc.).
The change was never reflected in the Registrar of Companies (ROC) records. Mandatory disclosures, such as BEN-2 (SBO Rules), disclosure in the Annual Return (MGT-7), and FC-GPR filing, were never submitted under the Companies Act, FEMA and related regulations.
At the ROC, neither an SH-4 share transfer form was filed, nor any board resolution, nor were the required updates in BEN-2 or MGT-7 made. Bhavit Seth, director of Sporta Technologies, signed documents that positioned him as both the payer and the recipient.
The role of banks is also under scrutiny: Kotak Mahindra Bank, Barclays Bank, IndusInd Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, RBL Bank, CSB Bank, Axis Bank, and Yes Bank collectively issued loans to Dream11 amounting to ₹7,666 crore without collateral and without the required formalities. The pressing question arises: under whose instructions and with what legitimacy was this done?
The silence of the RBI has also drawn considerable curiosity. Dream11 conducted transactions worth thousands of crores without obtaining a licence under the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007. Is it just an oversight or a deliberate silence from India’s central bank?
As part of a crucial FDI-related compliance process, whenever an Indian company receives foreign investment and allots shares, it must file the FC-GPR form within 30 days of allotment through the FIRMS portal. This entails the investor’s information, amount, currency, number of shares and company details to ensure that foreign capital has come through legitimate routes and that FEMA and FDI policy have been adhered to. In the case of Dream11, this filing was not found.
Investigations into other online fantasy sports companies also point to a vast offshore financial empire. Long before the Gaming Bill was introduced, industrial houses had already ventured into online fantasy sports, particularly through the IPL ecosystem.
It was an economic empire where black money could easily be absorbed and brought back into India as white through round-tripping. Effectively, this was a parallel empire where no government rule was meant to be followed.
The real base of these companies lies in tax havens and offshore financial centres such as the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Mauritius, Seychelles, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Singapore, Hong Kong, and even Delaware in the United States.
Prominent investors and corporations connected to this web include Tiger Global, Tencent, SoftBank, Foxconn, Gameskraft, Dream11, MPL, My11Circle, RummyCircle, BalleBaazi, MyTeam11, 11Wickets, FanFight, Fantasy Akhada, PlayerzPot, Halaplay, Gamezy, Howzat, NostraGamus, and Nazara Technologies. New Delhi Post has found that many of them maintain offshore addresses in tax havens.
Business tycoon Sunil Mittal’s son Kavin Bharti Mittal launched Rush Gaming Universe (RGU), an Indian crypto-based mobile gaming platform, in 2021 out of the Hike ecosystem. While New Delhi Post does not possess any evidence of money laundering or other economic crimes directly against Kavin, payments through crypto in skill-based games fall under the category of economic offences after the passage of the Online Gaming Bill, 2025.
The most disturbing claim centres around Lotus 365, a platform with links to Dawood Ibrahim. Lotus 365 not only routed betting money but also funnelled funds into terror financing, with alleged penetration into both Bollywood and cricket.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
- Why has no FIR been filed against Dream11 and other platforms despite evidence of huge financial bungling?
- Who are the real beneficial stakeholders behind gaming firms operating in India?
- Why is there no probe into BCCI role in India’s great gaming nexus?
- Have cricket tournaments, including IPL, been conduits for laundering?
- Have fantasy gaming companies in the ‘Game of Chance’ category already shut their apps?
- If not, has the government acted to close major platforms?
