It seems that cricketer S. Sreesanth, arrested on charges of spot fixing last Thursday, was interested in betting many years before the IPL scandal broke out.
S36 Sports and Entertainment Pvt. Ltd, the company in which he held 74 per cent stakes, had proposed running “betting houses” in India and abroad as one of the main objectives of the company. Incidentally, legal sports betting in India is confined only to horse racing, though illegal betting thrives in cricket.
With its registered office in Karnataka, the company’s objectives, among others, were to run coaching centres, gymnasiums, health clubs, fitness centres, indoor centres, sports bars, aerobic clubs, yoga and fitness centres, nutrition clinics besides the betting centres, as per the company’s five-page Memorandum of Association filed before the Registrar of Companies in Bangalore on September 24, 2010. A copy of the MoA is with The Hindu. While Sreesanth held 74 per cent of the total 10,000 shares of the company, Sivakumar Puzhankara held the rest.
