The data on Electoral Bonds released by the Election Commission on Thursday had several names, including billionaire tycoons to lesser-known entities, as buyers.
Though the exhaustive list included who's who of the business world, including steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, Sunil Bharti Mittal's Bharti Airtel, Anil Agarwal's Vedanta, ITC, Mahindra and Mahindra, DLF, PVR, Birlas, Bajajs, Jindals, Spicejet, IndiGo and the Goenkas, it was another name that stood out for making the biggest donation. It is a little-known lottery company called Future Gaming and Hotel Services.
Future Gaming and Hotel Services purchased possibly the highest amount of bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore. The company was founded by Santiago Martin, also known as the Lottery King, in 1991. Martin, who was a labourer in Myanmar, returned home to start a lottery business in 1988 which was the Martin Lottery Agencies Ltd in Coimbatore. This later metamorphosed into Future Gaming and Hotel Services.
Though it operated out of Tamil Nadu, Future Gaming later shifted base to Karnataka and Kerala after then Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalitha had banned lottery in the state in 2003.
Today its operations are spread across 13 states, including the North East where it is the sole distributor of the popular ‘Dear Lottery’. According to the company website, Martin was also the Consul General for Liberia, where he also set up a lottery industry, the Future Gaming website states.
He is also the President of the All India Federation of Lottery Trade and Allied Industries, a lobby of lottery distributors, stockists and agents.
But, Martin faces many legal troubles. The Enforcement Directorate attached assets of lottery company Future Gaming & Hotel Services Private Limited and its various sub-distributors worth over Rs 409 crore in a money laundering case in April 2022. The attached assets were in the form of balances in bank accounts and Mutual Fund Holdings.
The ED in a statement had alleged that Future Gaming & Hotel Services Pvt. Ltd., its various sub-distributors, and area-distributors criminally conspired together and illegally retained unsold lottery tickets and claimed top prizes on such unsold tickets in the pre-GST period till 2017.
“Further, sale proceeds of lottery tickets have been illegally diverted towards gifts and incentives by modifying the prize structure of lottery schemes without any approval from the state governments. In this manner, Future Gaming and its sub-distributor companies illegally claimed around Rs 400 crore between 2014 and 2017,” said the ED in a statement.
The ED also searched the premises of Aadhav Arjun, son-in-law of Santiago Martin, earlier this month in connection with an illegal sand mining case.
In 2015, Martin was accused in lottery scams in Kerala and the CBI had filed a Central Bureau of Investigation charge sheet that alleged the company sold lotteries from the government of Sikkim in Kerala.
He was reportedly close to the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) and had made a film based on a script by former Tamil Nadu CM Karunanidhi in 2011. He was arrested in Tamil Nadu in August 2011 over an alleged land grab case when J Jayalalithaa was the chief minister.
