- Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Martin, who founded Future Gaming and Hotel Services that made the biggest donation, reportedly started his venture in the lottery business when he was just 13..
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA’S election commission on Thursday (14) revealed data it has received from the State Bank of India, India’s largest public sector bank, on electoral bonds that allowed individuals and companies to make donations to the country’s political parties. Donations made under the bonds scheme allowed people and firms to keep their identities secret.
The data were disclosed on the orders given by the Supreme Court of India.
Following the revelation, it was found that a lottery company from Coimbatore in the southern state of Tamil Nadu topped the list of donors. Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited led by Santiago Martin acquired bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore (£129 million) between April 2019 and January 2024.
According to the data, the company bought all the electoral bonds in denominations of Rs 1 crore (£94,661).
Read: India electoral bonds data released: From Lakshmi Mittal, Vedanta to lesser entities among buyers
The company was founded in 1991 and known earlier as Martin Lottery Agencies Limited. It was owned by a man named Santiago Martin, also known as the ‘Lottery King’ of India.
According to the website of Martin Charitable Trust, Martin is the founder and chairman of the Martin Group of Companies. The website says the story of the founder is “one that epitomises the success of a man who built nothing, into an empire”.
Martin reportedly started his venture in the lottery business when he was just 13 and “had managed to develop and secure a vast marketing network of the buyers and sellers of lotteries all over India”, says Future Gaming website.
Read: India’s general election dates to be unveiled on March 16
Future Gaming is the first lottery firm in India to have facilitated live telecast on television of the draws conducted by various governments for lotteries that are distributed through them. Future Gaming is a part of the Asia Pacific Lottery Association and since 2001, it has been a member of the World Lottery Association (WLA) which granted it accreditation in 2009 for meeting the benchmark of the first level of the ‘WLA Responsible Gaming Framework’.
As per the Future Gaming website, Martin was also the consul general for Liberia where he set up a lottery industry. He is also the president of the All India Federation of Lottery Trade and Allied Industries — a lobby of distributors, stockists and agents of lotteries.
The firm has also been under the scanner of India’s economic crime-fighting agency — Enforcement Directorate — and the income-tax department.
While there have been raids at premises linked to Martin across the country, the ED attached movable assets worth Rs 410 crore (£38.8 million) and soon after, Future Gaming bought Rs 100 crore (£9.4 million) in electoral bonds, India’s Indian Express newspaper reported.
Martin was also arrested in 2012 for alleged illegal activities.
After starting as a labourer in Yangon in Myanmar, Martin returned to India in 1988 and started a lottery business in Coimbatore by the name of Martin Lottery Agencies Limited. He became a household name fast as the craze for lottery had swept the region then. Martin soon expanded his business to other parts of India, including in the east and northeast. Today, his group has even set up firms in Myanmar.
In subsequent years, he ventured into other businesses such as real estate, alternative energy, visual media entertainment, textiles, healthcare, education, property development, online gaming, casinos, among others.
According to the website of Martin Charitable Trust, “With a professional strength of more than 1000 committed staff working in the organization and more than 260 stockiest in all lottery playing states, his (Martin’s) enterprise has transformed into more of a community that has enabled the benefit of millions, perhaps billions of individuals, dependent on the industry for welfare and livelihood, both directly and indirectly, both then and now.”
It is also claimed that Martin and his family received the personal apostolic blessing of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI.
According to one report by the Indian Express, Martin first stint with political ploys happened in 2008 when he made a contribution of Rs 2 crore (£189,322) to ‘Deshabhimani’, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Kerala when he was facing accusation of defrauding the government of the state of Sikkim.
The contribution came at a time when the party was facing an internal churning between two of the Left party’s stalwarts — Pinarayi Vijayan, the current chief minister of Kerala, and V Achuthanandan, a former chief minister of the state who turned 100 last year.
Later, the ‘Lottery King’ also had close close ties with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the ruling party of Tamil Nadu. In 2011, he produced a Tamil film named ‘Ilaignan’, spending Rs 20 crore (£1.89 million) on it. The movie’s screenwriter was none other than the former chief minister of the state, M Karunanidhi.