 "Santiago Martin")
Future Gaming and Hotel Services, a little-known Coimbatore-based company, has emerged as the biggest buyer of electoral bonds. The $2 billion gaming company purchased electoral bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore between April 2019 and January 2024, according to data shared by the Election Commission of India (ECI) on the orders of the Supreme Court.
While the names of Future Gaming, earlier known as Martin Lottery Agencies, and its founder Santiago Martin came as a surprise to many on Thursday, they are no strangers to controversies. Their story is nothing short of a Bollywood movie. A tumultuous tale of the meteoric rise and fall of a company, a rags-to-riches story of its owner, who started as a labourer in Myanmar before shifting in 1988 to Tamil Nadu where he started his business in 1991 and metamorphosed into the 'Lottery King' of India.
The company reportedly donated Rs 150 crore in 2020-21, Rs 544 crore in 2021-22, Rs 328 crore in 2022-23 and Rs 341 crore in 2023-24. During these years, the company's maximum profit before tax (PBT) was reported at Rs 84.79 crore in 2020-21, while in all other years, it posted a PBT of over Rs 82 crore.
Founded in 1991, Future Gaming is primarily in the lottery business, but, over the years, has made its mark in real estate, movie production, music, and even in the space sector, among others. The company’s lottery business took a hit when in 2003 then-Chief Minister Jayalalithaa banned the sale of lotteries in Tamil Nadu. This forced Martin to shift his focus to Karnataka and Kerala.
It was during this time Martin started the satellite television channel Southern Spice Music. It started as a channel to announce lottery results. Future Gaming was the first lottery company in India to facilitate the live telecast on TV of the draws conducted by various governments. Interestingly, the channel became so popular that MTV India approached Martin with a takeover offer. The deal, however, did not work out. Later, the channel lost its prominence and has now been re-launched on a digital platform.
In the mid-2000s, Martin expanded his footprint to North East, Bhutan and Nepal, handling government lottery schemes. In most of these regions, he is apparently the only distributor of lottery tickets.
He has been under the scrutiny of Central agencies, including the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Income Tax Department. The CBI has registered multiple cases against Martin for allegedly cheating the Sikkim government. As per the CBI chargesheet, the company had been selling Sikkim lottery tickets in Kerala since 2005 but was not paying the full amount of sales to the government, resulting in a loss of around Rs 4,500 crore.
In 2023, the ED froze assets worth around Rs 457 crore under the anti-money laundering law, indicating that the company led to an alleged loss of over Rs 900 crore to the Sikkim government through fraudulent sale of the state lottery in Kerala. The action by ED in connection with money laundering stemmed from a CBI charge sheet filed against Martin and others for alleged offences relating to the sale of the Sikkim government lotteries in Kerala.
According to the BJP unit in Sikkim, the tenders for these lotteries have been going to Future Gaming since 1995 and the company has been earning hundreds of crores with the state receiving only 0.40 per cent revenue from it. Martin was accused of money laundering in 2016 and the ED attached his property worth around Rs 910 crore.
In 2011, he produced the Tamil movie Ilaignan, which was DMK stalwart M Karunanidhi's 75th movie as a scriptwriter. In the same year, Martin was arrested and jailed in Vellore for alleged wrongdoing. He is close to the BJP unit in Tamil Nadu with his son Charles Jose Martin joining the party in 2015 and his wife Leema reportedly sharing dias with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an election rally in 2014.
Martin contributed Rs 2 crore to the CPM mouthpiece ‘Deshabhimani’ while facing the wrath in Kerala. Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi has appeared for him in a case, sparking protests against the party in Kerala.
According to the company, Martin was also the Consul General for Liberia, where he has his business presence. In February 2023, its Martin Foundation came into the news when it became the driving force behind India's first hybrid-sounding rocket launched by private players from Pattipulam village in Chengalpattu.
With the electoral bond details out, Martin and his company are again in the limelight, probably the beginning of yet another controversy in its history.
