Annual turnover of ‘lottery king’ Martin’s business at Rs 15,000 crore: ED probe | India News

NEW DELHI: Headquartered in Coimbatore Santiago Martinbetter known as ‘lottery king‘, has an annual turnover of Rs 15,000 crore in its lottery business, according to an ongoing report emergency probe which began in 2014. The law enforcement agency has already attached properties and other assets worth over Rs 1,000 crore from Martin – Rs 622 crore for its Kochi zonal unit and Rs 409 crore for the Kochi zonal unit. Kolkata after the identification of alleged ‘proceeds of crime’ generated from his illegal profits from the lottery business.
The ED investigation is based on four FIRs filed against him and his company: one by CBI in 2014, two by Kolkata police in 2022 and a fourth registered by the Meghalaya government in 2024 in which he claimed a loss of 1.5 billion of rupees for alleged illegal activities. sales by Martín’s entity.
The agency’s recent searches at Martin’s premises, when it seized unaccounted cash of Rs 12 crore and fixed deposits of Rs 6.4 crore, found assets linked to him in Coimbatore, Chennai, Mumbai, Dubai and London, in addition of investments in stock markets.
Martin’s Future Gaming & Hotel Services Pvt Ltd, the company behind the lottery business, was the largest contributor to political parties with Rs 1,368 crore donated through electoral bonds between 2019 and 2024. Of the Rs 1,592 crore received by TMC through bonds, Rs 542 crore came from Future Gaming.
The lottery king contributed Rs 503 million to DMK, out of the party’s total bond income of Rs 632 million. BJP (Rs 100 crore), YSRCP (Rs 154 crore) and Congress (Rs 50 crore) were among other beneficiaries of his benevolence.
The investigation further found that Martin had launched more than 350 companies and SPVs (special purpose vehicles) to acquire property from the “proceeds of crime”, many of them purchased by giving lottery prizes to property sellers.
Their relatives and friends were appointed lottery dealers who kept the winning lotteries and then after the draw claimed prizes ranging “from a few lakhs to crores” of rupees. These lotteries were not sold to the public or returned to the state government, as required by law. The agency found evidence of unsold ticket packages, including prize-winning ones.
ED’s latest findings showed that Martin had sold at least two assets from the attached assets. The agency is contemplating filing a case against the “criminal act.”
“Although Future Gaming’s annual turnover from lottery sales is over Rs 15,000 crore, the company has declared very little profit,” a source said. The company mainly deals in the Sikkim state lottery and most of its sales come from West Bengal (more than 90% of the business), besides Kerala (until 2010), Punjab, Goa and Maharashtra. Of the total cash generated by Sikkim lotteries, Martin paid only Rs 8-10 crore a year to the state government till 2014 as revenue share, sources said.
Meghalaya State Lottery director Mary Sonty Marak filed an FIR in Shillong last year alleging that Martin and his close associate Subbayan Nagarajan “conspired with others to intimidate, threaten and coerce warehousemen and sub-warehousekeepers of the Meghalaya State Lottery and prevented the official distribution of state lotteries which caused a business loss to the state of Rs 1,500 crore.”