Chennai: The Income-Tax department carried out a nationwide raid operation on Santiago Martin, at his 70 properties, but he is largely unperturbed by it.
After all, this is not the first time for him to come under the radar of law enforcement agencies.
Popularly known as ‘lottery king’, the Coimbatore-based businessman is a billionaire with reported wealth of over Rs 7,000 crore he made through various means in India and neighbouring countries.
It is claimed that as much as Rs 595 crore was seized by taxmen in the recent searches, but the target of the I-T sleuths, who began the raids on 30 April, was to find even more, sources say. Surprisingly, the officials could not clinch any evidence of tax evasion by him, they add.
Martin’s is a rags to riches story. He had earlier worked as a daily wager in Yangon, Myanmar, until he explored the world of lottery tickets. In 1988, he began his own business ‘Martin Lottery Agencies Ltd’ in Tamilnadu and expanded to Karnataka and Kerala. But in 2003, after the State government banned lotteries, he lost ground in Tamilnadu, it is said.
Martin now operates primarily in Kerala and north-eastern States where lottery trade is still permitted. His main business is the distribution of lotteries run by State governments, in which he functions as main agent.
Over the years, he is said to have forged a good relationship with top guns in the Bhutanese and Nepalese governments, where he is the sole distributor of lottery tickets. Even in Tamilnadu, he has close links with top politicians and their family members and aides, it is claimed. He is also having interests in real estate, media, education and other fields.
His murky operations came to light in 2011, when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered 32 cases against Martin and his associates for allegedly cheating the Sikkim government of Rs 4,500 crore. According to the agency, starting 2005, Martin had sold lottery tickets worth Rs 4,752 crore on behalf of the Sikkim government in Kerala, but paid the State only Rs 143 crore.
In Kerala, the ‘lottery scandal’ kicked up a storm, forcing the government to ban the sale of Sikkim lottery tickets in the State for two years, starting 2012.
A number of lottery winners had reportedly admitted to the CBI that they had bought Sikkim lottery tickets to convert their black money into white.
Unlike, other cases, this time, apart from financial irregularities and I-T raids, Santiago is being haunted by a mysterious death of his employee.
An accounting staff member at Martin’s Homeopathy college in Coimbatore for over 20 years, Palanisami (45) was found dead in a pond in Karamadai just hours after he was grilled by I-T officials on 3 May. While the I-T department has maintained that Palanisami had appeared for questioning with an injury on his wrist, Palanisami’s family has alleged that there is a conspiracy behind his death. A few days ago, Palanisami’s son Rohin Kumar filed a petition in the Madras High Court, seeking a CB-CID probe into his father’s mysterious death.
Martin has another side too. He had contributed huge money for various disaster management efforts in the State, be it the Chennai floods or Vardah Cyclone. He runs charities too, circles close to him say, adding: “He also ranks among the top taxpayers in the country.” But, that’s a different story.