Chennai: It has been almost two decades since the lottery has been banned in Tamil Nadu. Yet, the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) largest donor is a company engaged in the lottery business. Such is the curious case of Future Gaming and Hotel Services and its owner, Santiago Martin.
From his beginnings as a labourer in Myanmar to owning one of the most successful lottery businesses in the country and eventually becoming a close associate of the late DMK patriarch M. Karunanidhi and his son and current chief minister M.K. Stalin, the 63-year-old Martin, popularly known as “Lottery King”, has come a long way.
According to data released by the Election Commission of India on 21 March, Martin’s Future Gaming was the highest purchaser of electoral bonds, having donated Rs 1,368 crore, mainly to the Trinamool Congress and the DMK. The former got Rs 542 crore from Future Gaming, while the latter got Rs 509 crore.
Significantly, Future Gaming accounted for 77.5 percent of DMK’s political donations between 2019 and 2023, followed by construction firm Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd, which donated Rs 105 crore.
According to a former DMK spokesperson who didn’t want to be named, for the party, Martin isn’t just a businessman.
“He has been close to the DMK leader’s first family and it’s more than business that has brought them together,” the former spokesperson said.
But Martin’s political connections aren’t limited to just the DMK. His wife Leema Rose is a staunch supporter of T.R. Pachamuthu, also known as T. R. Paarivendhar, founder-chairman of Tamil Nadu’s SRM Group of educational institutions and the current MP for Perambalur. Pachamuthu won in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as a DMK candidate but is currently with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
As a result, Leema is campaigning for the party’s Tamil Nadu chief K. Annamalai in Coimbatore — the Martin family’s home turf.
ThePrint tried to reach Martin and Leema Rose through calls and text messages for their comments. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
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From labourer to ‘Lottery King’
According to the website of the Martin Foundation — the family’s charitable trust that mainly works in healthcare, education, and flood relief — Martin was only 13 when he set up his own lottery shop in Coimbatore.
Today, his company clocks an average annual growth of 109 percent, according to the website. In India, lottery is legal in 13 states — Nagaland, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Mizoram, Kerala, Maharashtra, Goa, Manipur, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, and Assam.
Martin has his business in at least half of these. Although lottery is the mainstay of the Martin Group of Companies, the business has expanded to real estate, construction, visual media, entertainment, textiles, healthcare, and education.
Martin and DMK
According to DMK leaders ThePrint spoke to, Martin’s association with the party dates back to the early 2000s, with some even attributing then chief minister J. Jayalalithaa’s 2003 decision to ban the lottery in Tamil Nadu to this growing proximity.
In 2011, Martin turned filmmaker, producing a Tamil movie called Ilaignan. Based on Russian novelist Maxim Gorky’s 1907 book, The Mother the movie, starring Pa. Vijay, had its script written by then chief minister, M. Karunanidhi.
“Even when he produced the movie, the lottery ban had still not been lifted in the state. Such was the relationship between him and the party,” the DMK leader, quoted earlier, said.
This proximity to one of Tamil Nadu’s two major political parties cost him. In August 2011 — two months after Jayalalithaa took over as chief minister — Martin was among several people arrested for land-grabbing that had allegedly occurred under the previous DMK regime.
Madras High Court later quashed the case. The DMK leaders called this “an act of political vendetta”.
“It’s the same reason that she had Martin arrested as well,” a DMK leader considered close to Karunanidhi told ThePrint.
Martin also connected with the DMK in another way — his son-in-law Aadhav Arjuna, a national basketball player, worked with the party when he was employed at Prashant Kishor’s election strategy firm Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC) during the 2021 Tamil Nadu assembly polls, and later moved to the DMK’s political strategy company, PEN.
In February, Aadhav joined the Dalit outfit and DMK ally Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK). On 9 March, less than a month after he was inducted into the party as its deputy general secretary, the Enforcement Directorate conducted raids on premises linked to him in connection with a sand mining investigation.
The EC’s electoral bond data — made public on the Supreme Court’s insistence — now shows how Martin’s Future Gaming has kept the DMK’s coffers flush.
But in 2019, Tamil magazine Junior Vikatan got into legal trouble for having carried a report on how Stalin had managed to “negotiate” a Rs 500 crore donation deal with Martin and his group of companies.
An incensed Stalin filed a civil suit against publisher Ananda Vikatan seeking Rs 1.1 crore in damages. That suit is pending at the Madras High Court.
The DMK has yet to comment on the EC data. But party sources have denied that any concessions have been made to Martin, pointing out that the state ban on the lottery has not been lifted.
Martin’s donations and connections with political parties
This isn’t the first time that Martin’s donations to political parties made headlines.
The group’s contribution of Rs 2 crore to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) between 2006 and 2011 caused a row in Kerala.
Those donations came at a time when the state’s Left Democratic Front government under CPI (M) leader and chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan was taking action against lotteries from outside the state — including ones sold by Martin’s own firm. As the row escalated, the then CM ordered the party to return the donation.
Martin also has connections with other political parties. According to EC’s data, Future Gaming and Hotel Services’ donation to the TMC is its highest contribution to any political party.
Significantly, Future Gaming is the sole distributor of ‘Dear Lottery’, a paper lottery organised by the states of Sikkim and Nagaland. The lottery is popular in West Bengal.
Martin’s connections with the BJP run just as deep. Not only is his wife Leema Rose now campaigning for Annamalai, but his businessman son Jose Charles Martin has been a party member since 2015, although he holds no prominent positions.
According to EC’s data, Future Gaming donated Rs 100 crore to the party — its third-highest contribution after the TMC and the DMK.
Cheating to money laundering — cases against Martin
Martin has also been the subject of several investigations over the years. According to multiple sources from law enforcement agencies, Martin faces at least 30 cases filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the ED, with the latter attaching properties worth Rs 800 crore between 2016 and 2024 as part of its investigation.
The ED’s documents, accessed by ThePrint, show that multiple firms have been registered to the same addresses in Coimbatore and Chennai. These were not just lottery firms but also dealt with other services, ranging from real estate to education.
In 2010, the CBI first booked Martin for cheating the Sikkim government of Rs 4,500 crore through ‘Dear Lottery’. According to the agency’s 2014 chargesheet, while Martin’s company sold lottery tickets worth Rs 4,752 crore in Kerala, only Rs 142.93 crore went to the Sikkim government.
The ED also filed a separate case in connection with this in 2019.
Last month, Martin approached a Kochi court to keep the ED case against him in abeyance until the CBI case is disposed of. However, the special court dismissed his petition.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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