Chennai: The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday conducted fresh raids in multiple states in connection with a money laundering investigation against Chennai-based ‘lottery king’ Santiago Martin, reports claimed.
Martin had made headlines earlier this year for being the single biggest donor to political parties with over Rs 1,300 crore in electoral bonds. According to reports, his contributions exceeded Rs 1,300 crore between 2019 and 2024.
On Thursday, sources revealed that at least 20 premises linked to Martin, his son-in-law Aadhav Arjun and associates in Chennai and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, Faridabad in Haryana, Ludhiana in Punjab and Kolkata in West Bengal were being raided as part of a ‘comprehensive’ action.
Why is Martin facing investigation?
The lottery baron is facing ED investigation in a money laundering case after the Madras High Court recently allowed the central agency to proceed against him as the Tamil Nadu Police had decided to close the primary FIR against him and a few others. The police’s plea of closing the FIR was accepted by a lower court.
The ED has taken cognisance of a clutch of police FIRs against Martin to start the latest action for lottery ‘fraud’ and ‘illegal’ sale of lottery. The agency had searched his premises in the past as well.
Last year, the ED had attached assets worth about Rs 457 crore in a case against Martin linked to an alleged loss of over Rs 900 crore to the Sikkim government by fraudulent sale of the state lottery in Kerala, the Times Now reported.
The ED has been investigating Martin since 2019.
Know the lottery baron’s rags-to-riches story:
- Martin was born in 1961 in the Andaman islands.
- As a teenager, reports claimed that he used to work as a daily-wage labourer in Myanmar.
- In the1980s, he returned to India. He started working in a tea shop in Tamil Nadu.
- He was reportedly struck by the popularity of lottery tickets among all sections of Tamil Nadu’s population, especially the poor and this prompted him to start the business, reported the BBC.
- Martin had started his first shop in Coimbatore. In barely a few years, he overtook two rivals to become the biggest seller of lottery tickets in Tamil Nadu.
- Martin’s company introduced the ‘two-digit’ lottery tickets with scratch cards which revealed two digits that the buyer could instantly check against winning numbers flashed through a live telecast facilitated by the firm. This was how he boosted the sales massively.
- Martin once told rediff.com in 2001 that he sold 12 million lottery tickets every day. By then, his company had agreements with many state governments for distributing lottery tickets and he expanded his business to other states, like Karnataka, Kerala, Sikkim, etc.
