Company raided in Kolkata had links to ‘lottery king’ Santiago Martin

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Martin, accused of defrauding the Sikkim government to the tune of Rs 4,500 crore through an illegal lottery racket in Kerala in 2010, has been found to be linked to Future Plus Enterprises through long-term associate Subbayan Nagarajan, a promoter of the firm who has been detained in Kolkata.

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According to the Memorandum of Association for Future Plus Enterprises, the company was primarily involved in the business of organising lotteries in the country, and ROC documents reveal that Nagarajan was the promoter of the firm and a director between April 2011 and July 2012.

READ | Profile: Santiago Martin, from labourer in Myanmar to Lottery King

Nagarajan, considered to be Martin’s aide, was also the chairman of another Kolkata lottery firm, Teasel Marketing Private Limited, created in March 2008 after the merger of two Jharkhand lottery firms — Smart Associates (suspected to be Martin’s firm) and Teasel Marketing Private Limited. The former Smart Associates executive director Marimuthu Thiru Murugan is currently one of the directors of Teasel Marketing Private Limited, while Nagarajan served as its chairman for two years soon after the takeover of the company.

According to ROC documents, in February 2013, the board of Teasel Marketing allotted 1,000 equity shares to Martin’s sons Jose Charles Martin and M Jose Daison.

There have been large cash seizures linked to Martin in the past in Tamil Nadu. In 2013, Rs 7.2 crore was seized from Nagarajan, and Martin’s wife Leema Rose was arrested in the case after the family failed to provide a satisfactory explanation.

Martin was estimated to be running lottery businesses worth Rs 7,000 crore about five years ago. He has, in the past, claimed to be the highest individual income tax payer in the country. He has also been accused of cheating the governments of small states that operate lotteries, like Sikkim, of crores in revenue by creating fake lotteries.

The CBI has filed several chargesheets against Martin for his illegal operations in Kerala.

Martin, now aged 54, worked as a labourer in Myanmar in his youth and started the lottery business around 1988 in Tamil Nadu. In 2011, Martin, at a cost of Rs 20 crore, produced a Tamil film titled Ilaignan, based on a story written by DMK chief and then Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi.