According to the ECI data, Future Gaming, which runs the popular ‘Dear Lottery’ game in West Bengal and Sikkim, made its first donation to the TMC on 14 January, 2022. This was around the time when the Kolkata Police, which was investigating cheating and criminal conspiracy charges against the company, closed two cases against it, ThePrint has learnt.
The FIRs are from 2019 and form the basis of the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED’s) money laundering case against the company, registered on 28 May, 2021. ThePrint has seen both FIRs.
According to an ED officer, although the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had been probing Future Gaming for alleged money laundering since 2010, there was no progress in that case after 2014.
It was only after the Kolkata Police registered its FIRs against Future Gaming in 2019 that the ED’s investigation began, the officer added.
In April 2022, the ED attached over Rs 400 crore worth of the company’s assets. In a press statement, the agency said it had initiated a money laundering investigation “against M/S Future Gaming and its Sub Distributors and Area Distributors for West Bengal on the basis of FIRs registered by Kolkata Police under various sections of IPC and under section 7(3) and 9 of Lotteries Regulation Act, 1998”.
However, two closure reports from the Kolkata Police — one from December 2021 and the second from January 2022 — have thrown the ED’s investigation into uncertainty. The reports cited want of evidence and “a mistake of law” in the cases, and, according to ED officers, came despite the agency conveying to the police department and the trial court that it had found evidence to substantiate its allegations.
Meanwhile, data from the ECI shows that Future Gaming made its first donation to the TMC in January 2022 — the same month as the police’s second closure report.
A Kolkata Police officer said that the police department’s special detective wing had been investigating the two cases before the closure reports were filed.
ThePrint reached Vidit Raj Bhundesh, deputy commissioner of the Kolkata Police’s detective department, for comment via text messages, and Future Gaming via email. This report will be updated if and when their responses are received.
On its part, the Trinamool Congress denies any knowledge of this, saying that while it “welcomes transparency in politics”, it didn’t know its donors because the contributions had been made anonymously.
This stance is in line with the defence most political parties, including the BJP, have taken after the ECI made details of electoral bonds public at the Supreme Court’s insistence.
“We do not know how much money was given to us. A drop box used to be kept in front of the Trinamool building. According to the law introduced by the BJP (Finance Act 2017, which introduced electoral bonds), the bonds would have no names. Nowhere would it say who the donor was,” TMC leader Kunal Ghosh told ThePrint.
However, the BJP has accused the TMC of blocking the central agency’s investigation, claiming this was “a ploy to cover up corruption”.
“A lottery company donating crores to TMC is the start of a fresh scam in West Bengal. We have seen in the past as well how the party has laundered public money in the state and this, too, comes as no surprise. Kolkata Police takes orders from the chief minister (TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee) directly,” BJP MP Samik Bhattacharya, chief spokesperson of the party’s West Bengal unit, said.
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‘Financial fraud, misappropriation’ — what FIRs said
In India, lotteries are regulated by the Lotteries (Regulation) Act, 1998. State governments can allow or disallow lotteries within their jurisdiction. In the same way, they can either sell lottery tickets themselves or have agents or private companies do it.
States can also sell lottery tickets in other states that allow it.
Only 13 states allow lotteries in India: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Sikkim, and West Bengal.
Lotteries are a large source of revenue in West Bengal. The West Bengal State Lottery Directorate, which comes under the state finance department, says on its website that the revenue earned through lotteries is “mobilised for resources for developmental schemes of the state”.
Significantly, Future Gaming and Hotel Services Pvt. Ltd. is the sole distributor of ‘Dear Lottery’, a paper lottery organised by the states of Sikkim and Nagaland.
According to ThePrint’s analysis, the first FIR against the Coimbatore-based company was registered at the Bhowanipore Police Station in June 2019.
In his complaint, a Kalighat resident who claimed to be a regular buyer of ‘Dear Lottery’ alleged there was “large-scale financial fraud and misappropriation of government funds in sabotage of the lottery system running into crores”.
This FIR booked Future Gaming under IPC sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 34 (criminal act is done by several persons in furtherance of the common intention), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 417 and 419 (cheating), 418 (cheating with knowledge of wrongful loss),419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating and dishonesty) and provisions of the Lotteries (Regulation) Act, 1998.
The second FIR, registered at Kolkata’s Beliaghata Police Station in August 2019, was similar. The complainant, another lottery regular, claimed that the “accused have been organising the lottery according to their whims in the guise of promoting and selling lotteries owned by organising states”.
“There are innumerable instances where the accused themselves had claimed the first prize in the lotteries. In such cases, the accused converted their unaccounted money into legal money by showing extra prizes over and above the notified prizes,” the complainant said.
According to one of the ED officers quoted earlier, Future Gaming and its various sub-distributors, and area-distributors “criminally conspired” to illegally retain unsold lottery tickets and claim top prizes.
“Proceeds of lottery tickets were illegally diverted towards gifts and incentives by modifying the prize structure of lottery schemes without any approval from the organizing state governments, in this case, the Sikkim government. In this manner, M/s Future Gaming and its sub-distributor companies (Dear Lottery) illegally claimed around Rs 400 crore between 2014 and 2017,” the officer told ThePrint.
In March 2023, Future Gaming moved the Calcutta High Court seeking a stay on the ED investigation citing the Kolkata Police’s closure reports. Senior Counsel Kishore Datta, now the state’s advocate general, represented the firm in the case.
The high court has yet to decide whether the ED’s money laundering investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, is maintainable in light of the closure reports.
Meanwhile, according to ED officers, West Bengal government officials have been questioned in connection with the probe.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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