With Rs 1,368 crore, ‘Lottery King’ Santiago Martin is biggest electoral bonds donor. Who is he?

On Thursday (14 March), the Election Commission of India (ECI) uploaded all the details of electoral bonds purchased through State Bank of India (SBI) between 12 April 2019 and 24 January of this year, as directed by the Supreme Court.

In the details furnished , the highest amount of electoral bonds purchased was by a company named Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited. The firm, headed by Santiago Martin, had made donations through electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore, being the only one to exceed the Rs 1,000-crore mark.

But who exactly is Santiago Martin? Why is he popularly known as the ‘Lottery King’? And what do we know of his company, Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited?

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Life of Santiago Martin

According to the website of Martin Charitable Trust, Santiago Martin is the founder and chairman of the Martin Group of Companies. As the website states, “The story of his life is one that epitomises the success of a man who built nothing, into an empire.”

Today, he may be regarded as the ‘Lottery King’ of India having started in the industry at the young age of 13, but his climb to the top has been remarkable. It is said that he began his career as a labourer in Myanmar’s Yangon and then returned to India in 1988. It’s at this time that he started a lottery business in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore known as Martin Lottery Agencies Ltd. He soon earned the nickname of ‘Lottery Martin’ and his business became a household name was that a lottery craze had swept the region during the period.

In the subsequent years, he expanded his business to Karnataka, Kerala and even spread as far as the Northeast

Martin then expanded into other businesses such as real estate, construction, alternative energy, visual media entertainment, textiles, hospitality, health care, education, software and technology, property development, agro, online gaming, casinos, and building materials.

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As per the website, Martin and his family also received the personal apostolic blessing of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI.

The website further claims that he is also the President of All India Federation of Lottery Trade and Allied Industries – an organisation engaged for uplifting and infusing credibility to the lottery trade in India.

“Under his stewardship, his enterprise, Future Gaming Solutions India Pvt Ltd became a member of the prestigious World Lottery Association and is expanding into the field of Online Gaming & Casinos and Sports Betting,” it added.

Today, Martin’s empire boasts of having a workforce of over 1,000 employees spread across Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, and West Bengal.

His website further claims that he was consul general for the Republic of Liberia and helped assist the developing Liberian economy by boosting the lottery industry there.

Martin’s brush with politics and controversies

As per an Indian Express report, Martin’s first brush with political scandal took place in 2008 when he contributed Rs 2 crore to CPI(M) mouthpiece Deshabhimani at a time when he facing allegations of defrauding the Sikkim government. The contribution came at a time when the party was facing an internal churn between Pinarayi Vijayan and V S Achuthanandan.

Achuthanandan had used Martin’s contribution as a way to attack Vijayan, forcing the latter to return the contribution and even remove heavyweight Malabar leader E P Jayarajan as general manager of the publication. As the Indian Express reports, thereafter, ‘Lottery Martin’ became a name associated with almost all political discourses about the decay of the Left in Kerala.

Over the years, the ‘Lottery King’ has also cultivated close ties with the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) in Tamil Nadu. In 2011, he produced a Tamil film called Ilaignan, spending Rs 20 crore on it. The movie’s screenwriter was former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi.

He’s also been arrested under land grabbing charges during the Jayalalithaa regime. However, the Madras High Court had then quashed his detention and he was released on bail.

Under the ED lens

Apart from the controversies, Martin has also had several legal run-ins — namely with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

In 2019, the ED launched an investigation against Martin, with The Quint reporting that the company and its sub-distributors had “criminally conspired” to illegally retain unsold lottery tickets in Sikkim and claim top prizes on unsold tickets to gain money to the tune of Rs 910 crore.

Later, in 2022, the ED initiated a money laundering probe against Martin’s company and seized Rs 409.92 crore worth of its assets. In the following year, another Rs 457 crore worth of assets were seized. In October 2023, the Income Tax raided Martin’s properties in Coimbatore in a parallel probe.

Earlier in March this year, the ED conducted searches at Martin’s son-in-law, Aadhav Arjun’s premises in Tamil Nadu as part of a money laundering investigation linked to probe alleged illegal sand mining in the state.

Martin and electoral bonds

According to the data furnished by the EC on its website, ‘Lottery King’ Martin bought electoral bonds with a cumulative value of Rs 1,394 crore, all in denominations of Rs 1 crore. The data shows Martin’s company first started buying the bonds in October 2020. The firm continued to buy them in 2021, 2022, and 2023, and the last transaction was on January 2024.

With inputs from agencies