High Court of Delhi (Division Bench: Anil Kshetarpal & Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar, JJ.; judgment authored by Anil Kshetarpal, J.) dismissed a batch of six writ petitions challenging the PAO dated 10.09.2015 issued under Section 5(1) of the PMLA, the Original Complaint (OC No.523/2015) under Section 5(5) and the SCN dated 14.10.2015 under Section 8(1), arising out of ECIR/03/AMZO/2015 concerning large-scale hawala transactions and an international cricket betting racket operated through Betfair.com by 'Maruti Ahmedabad'. Held: (i) the Court had territorial jurisdiction under Article 226(2) since the procurement and distribution of Super Master Login IDs occurred in Delhi, constituting a substantial part of the cause of action; (ii) on maintainability, following its recent decision in Directorate of Enforcement v. M/s Prakash Industries Ltd. (LPA 102/2023), none of the three Whirlpool contingencies was attracted and recourse to Article 226 despite the alternative statutory hierarchy under Sections 8, 26 and 42 PMLA was inappropriate; (iii) the D/AO had sufficient and cogent material to form the requisite 'reason to believe', which is an objective, evidence-based satisfaction and not mere suspicion; post the 2013 Amendment deleting clause (b) to Section 5(1), a chargesheet in the predicate offence is not a condition precedent for attachment; (iv) Super Master Login IDs are intangible digital assets constituting 'property' under Section 2(1)(v); even though cricket betting is not a scheduled offence, profits from the downstream betting activity remain traceable to IDs tainted at inception by forgery, cheating, identity fraud and criminal conspiracy, and hence constitute 'proceeds of crime' under Section 2(1)(u) ('fruit of a poisoned tree'); (v) the AA may validly function as a single-member Bench under Section 6 read with Sections 6(5)(b) and 6(7), and a SCN issued by a Bench comprising a technical member is valid; attachment under Section 5 is not a jurisdictional prerequisite for a SCN under Section 8(1), the three statutory triggers being alternative. All merits observations were expressly confined to a prima facie assessment and do not amount to final adjudication. Petitions and pending applications dismissed.
