NEW DELHI: Within weeks of the Madras high court validating the Enforcement Directorate’s money laundering probe against India’s biggest political donor Santiago Martin, better known as ‘lottery king’, the agency on Thursday carried out searches at 20 premises of the accused and his associates across Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Haryana and Punjab.
Martin and his company had donated Rs 1,368 crore of electoral bonds to different political parties.The searches were carried out at the premises of Martin and his close family members in Chennai and Coimbatore and at other associates in Faridabad, Ludhiana and Kolkata as the agency probes the ‘proceeds of crime’ generated from illegal distribution and sale of lotteries.
The money laundering probe had come to a halt after the Tamil Nadu police withdrew its FIR, which was the basis for the ED to register its investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The Supreme Court, too, had later ruled that though the ED is free to challenge the withdrawal of the FIR, but in absence of a predicate offence, the PMLA probe cannot be continued against the accused.
The agency then moved the Madras HC, which in an Oct 28 judgement ruled that the withdrawal of the corruption case, “predicate offence” in ED’s parlance, was illegal and validated ED’s case under the PMLA while also asking the state authorities to revive the corruption case.
Martin and his Future Gaming and Hotel Services (P) Ltd are accused of committing fraud in distribution of lotteries in Sikkim. After a search operation in Chennai and Coimbatore in May last year, the anti-money laundering agency had claimed that Santiago Martin and his family allegedly made “unlawful gain” of more than Rs 900 crore, which was a loss to the Sikkim government.
Soon after the last year’s searches, the ED had seized assets and bank deposits of the accused worth Rs 457 crore in connection with the lottery scam during the 2009-10 period. The agency had then said that Martin’s Coimbatore-based Future Gaming, the master distributor of Sikkim Lotteries in Kerala, made illegal gains by allegedly inflating the prize-winning tickets. The seized assets included Rs 158 crore in fixed deposits and mutual funds, and Rs 299 crore worth of properties.