The Enforcement Directorate began looking into the business that Santiago Martin, also referred to as "Lottery King," owned that acquired electoral bonds for more than Rs 1,350 crore in March 2022.
Following instructions from the Supreme Court, the Election Commission of India received data on electoral bonds from the SBI and posted it on its official website on Thursday.
The information that was obtained indicated that Future Gaming and Hotel Services was one of the major purchasers of the voided electoral bonds for the purpose of making political contributions.
The Anil Agarwal-controlled mining and metals conglomerate Vedanta Ltd (Rs 401 cr), Haldia Energy (Rs 377 cr) of the RP Sanjiv Goenka group, Essel Mining and Industries (Rs 225 cr), and Western UP Electricity Transmission Company Ltd (Rs 220 cr) are other corporates that purchased electoral bondss worth more than Rs 200 crore.
Future Gaming and Hotel Services may have invested the largest sum of money—roughly Rs. 1,368 crore in bonds. In 1991, Santiago Martin, often referred to as the Lottery King, launched the business. After serving as a laborer in Myanmar, Martin came back to Coimbatore in 1988 to launch the Martin Lottery Agencies Ltd. Later on, this evolved into Hotel Services and Future Gaming.
Even though Future Gaming was based in Tamil Nadu, it eventually moved to Karnataka and Kerala after the state's lottery was outlawed in 2003 by then-chief minister Jayalalitha.
Its operations are currently dispersed among 13 states, including the Northeast, where it is the only distributor of the well-known "Dear Lottery." On the Future Gaming website, it is stated that Martin established a lottery industry while serving as the Consul General of Liberia.
Additionally, he leads the lobby of lottery distributors, stockists, and agents, the All India Federation of Lottery Trade and Allied Industries.
Martin's supposed accomplishments are overshadowed by his legal problems. In April 2022, as part of a money laundering investigation, the Enforcement Directorate sequestered assets valued at approximately Rs 409 crore belonging to the lottery company Future Gaming & Hotel Services Private Limited and its other subadvisors.
Balances from bank accounts and mutual fund holdings made up the assets that were linked.
Future Gaming & Hotel Services Pvt. Ltd., its several sub-distributors, and area-distributors were accused by the ED in a statement of illegally banding together to keep unsold lottery tickets and to fraudulently claim top rewards on such unsold tickets from the pre-GST era till 2017.
Martin was charged in a Central Bureau of Investigation charge sheet filed in 2015 after the company was allegedly selling lotteries from the government of Sikkim in Kerala. Martin was also implicated in lottery frauds in Kerala.
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