The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached immovable property worth close to Rs 120 crore of Lottery King Santiago Martin and associates in a lottery scam.
Chennai: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has attached property worth Rs 119.6 crore belonging to companies floated by ‘Lottery King’ Santiago Martin and his associates. The property was attached in a case pertaining to a lottery scam that is being probed by the Enforcement Directorate.
It said a provisional order, for attachment of 88 plots and 61 flats in Tamil Nadu's Coimbatore district, has been issued under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against lottery baron Santiago Martin and his associates.
A criminal case was registered against Martin and his company Future Gaming Solutions Pvt Ltd (now Future Gaming and Hotel Services Pvt Ltd and formerly Martin Lottery Agencies Ltd) by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on the basis of a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) FIR and charge sheet, the ED said.
The federal probe agency said Martin and others hatched "a criminal conspiracy to violate the provisions of the Lottery Regulation Act, 1998 to obtain wrongful gains by cheating the Sikkim government". Martin has operations in Sikkim, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.
It alleged Martin's company and government officials obtained illegal gains "by way of non-remittance of sale proceeds to the public account of the Sikkim government". They sold Sikkim state lotteries in Kerala too, the ED charged.
"Martin and his associates made illegal gains to the extent of Rs 910.3 crore on account of inflating the prize-winning tickets claim for the period between April 2009 to August 2010.
"Martin invested this illegal money into purchase of immovable properties in the name of 40 companies, which were used for laundering the proceeds of crime," the ED alleged.
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