Who is Santiago Martin: After receiving the details of electoral bonds from State Bank of India (SBI), the Election Commission (EC) uploaded the complete list on its portal on Thursday (March 14, 2024). The list posted on the EC site contains all the names who had purchased electoral bonds to make political donations.
According to the list, the maximum number of bonds were bought by a company named Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited, which gave about Rs 1,368 crore through these bonds. The company is run by Santiago Martin, also known as the “Lottery King”. Come, let us know about them:
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Santiago Martin once worked as a laborer in Myanmar
According to the website of Santiago Martín’s charitable trust, his career began as a laborer in Yangon, Myanmar. In the year 1988, he returned to India and after coming to Tamil Nadu, he started lottery business. He later expanded the business to Karnataka and Kerala before moving to the Northeast. After starting the lottery business in North East, Santiago Martin also started the company in Bhutan and Nepal and soon started lottery business there also.
Move towards other businesses beyond lottery
According to the information available on the website of the charitable trust, later, Santiago Martin started expanding into other businesses including construction, real estate, textiles and hospitality. Santiago Martin is also the President of the All India Federation of Lottery Trade and Allied Industries, which is constantly striving to promote the growth and credibility of the lottery trade in India. Under the leadership of Santiago Martin, his company became a member of the prestigious World Lottery Association Future Gaming Solutions India Private Limited.
ED is investigating a case since 2019
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has been investigating Santiago Martin’s company for alleged violations of the PMLA law since 2019. They conducted raids in Coimbatore and Chennai in May 2023. Officials familiar with the case told the English newspaper ‘HT’ that the ED’s investigation is based on the charge sheet of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), in which it is alleged that the company sold lotteries from the Sikkim government in Kerala.
ED has made these serious allegations
The ED has accused Santiago Martin and his companies of exaggerating the claims of award-winning tickets from April 2009 to August 2010. Sikkim suffered a loss of ₹910 crore due to this.
And which company donated?
According to data provided by the poll panel, Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Limited donated ₹966 crore. This Hyderabad-based company is currently working on many infrastructure projects. Apart from this, SpiceJet, Indigo, Grasim Industries, Megha Engineering, Piramal Enterprises, Torrent Power, Bharti Airtel, DLF Commercial Developers, Vedanta Limited, Apollo Tyres, Edelweiss, PVR and many other companies are also among those who bought electoral bonds.
