In a major escalation of its ongoing investigation, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has frozen fresh financial assets worth a staggering ₹192 crore belonging to the popular real-money online gaming platform, WinZO. This latest action follows searches conducted at the accounting firm associated with the gaming company.
Details of the Latest ED Action
The federal probe agency carried out raids at the premises of WinZO's auditor on December 30. According to an official statement, the ED identified and froze "proceeds of crime" amounting to approximately ₹192 crore. These funds were held by ZO Games Pvt. Ltd., the fully-owned Indian subsidiary of WinZO Pvt. Ltd.
The frozen assets include bank balances, fixed deposits, and mutual funds. This development is part of a larger money laundering case being investigated under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.
Arrests and Allegations Against WinZO
The investigation took a serious turn with the arrest of WinZO's co-founders, Saumya Singh Rathore and Paavan Nanda, after they were questioned at the ED's Bengaluru office. While Rathore has been granted bail, Nanda's bail plea has been denied.
Officials have levelled serious accusations against the firm, including cheating, blocking user accounts, impersonation, and misuse of complainants' PAN cards. The ED's core allegation is that WinZO engaged in unscrupulous practices by making players compete against bots and artificial intelligence algorithms instead of real humans, without informing them.
The agency claims the company used software named 'PPP, EP, and Persona' for this purpose. It alleged that WinZO generated illicit 'Rake Commission' from matches where bots played against real users, amassing around ₹177 crore from this practice between May 2024 and August 2025 alone.
A Mounting Financial Scandal
This ₹192 crore freeze is not the first major financial hit for WinZO in this case. In earlier searches conducted on November 18 and November 22 at locations in Delhi and Gurgaon, the ED's Bengaluru zonal office had already frozen bonds, fixed deposits, and mutual funds worth about ₹505 crore.
The agency has presented a detailed breakdown of the alleged illicit earnings:
- ₹557 crore generated between April 2022 and December 2023.
- ₹177 crore won from bot matches between May 2024 and August 2025.
- User funds worth ₹43 crore allegedly held even after the government's ban on real-money online gaming in late 2024.
The ED has now quantified the total proceeds of crime in this case at approximately ₹802 crore. In response to the initial charges, a WinZO spokesperson had earlier stated that "fairness and transparency are core" to their platform's operations. However, the probe agency maintains that the company was involved in criminal activities, including limiting customer withdrawals from their wallets on the app.
