The chief executive officer (CEO) of Ulka Games Limited, a game development studio in disguise, and five other people have been arrested for allegedly laundering about Tk 200 crore through different gambling apps, particularly Teen Patti Gold.

Members of Rapid Action Battalion picked them up from Mohakhali and Uttara areas of the capital on Sunday. The arrestees are Zamilur Rashid, 31, Ulka Games CEO, Saimon Hossain, 29, Ridwan Ahmed, 29, Rakibul Alam, 29, Muntakim Ahmed, 37, and Qais Uddin Ahmed, 32.

Commander Khandaker Al Moin, director (Legal and Media) of RAB, briefed reporters at the elite force’s Karwan Bazar media centre in this regard on Monday.

He said, “Teen Patti Gold is a gaming app. Games can be played by downloading it into mobiles. The overall control of the app is in the hand of Moonfrog Labs. After getting registered with the app, some gaming chips are freely given to the players.”

“But later, the players have to buy chips from Moonfrog to continue playing. The transaction of money for buying chips is done through mobile banking services. Every day, 50,000 crore chips are sold in Bangladesh. The price of each crore chips is Tk 46-65. There’re 9 lakh regular gamers of Teen Patti Gold. Chips worth Tk 30 lakh is sold to the gamers every day,” he said.

The RAB officer said the arrestees with the help of their other cohorts siphoned about Tk 200 crore out of the country through Teen Patti Gold and some other online gambling apps since 2019.

He said Zamilur got acquainted with the authorities of India-based Moonfrog Labs in 2017. In 2018, he took a job at the labs as the Bangladesh representative. Aiming to reach Teen Patti Gold to more and more players, he took approval of Ulka Games from the government in 2019 in the name of developing legal gaming apps.

Later, Zamilur with the help of others began running gambling apps in the guise of legal gaming apps and laundered the money through those, said Moin.