An Indian man who made a fortune by promoting lottery tickets is within the highlight after he was revealed to be the highest donor to political events beneath a controversial funding scheme.

Santiago Martin’s firm, Future Gaming and Hotel Services Pvt. Ltd, purchased electoral bonds value 13.68bn rupees ($165m, £130m) between April 2019 and January 2024 beneath the scheme which allowed political donors to stay nameless – till the Supreme Court not too long ago scrapped the scheme and ordered their names to be revealed. While donations beneath this scheme weren’t unlawful, electoral bonds have been accused of constructing political funding extra opaque.

Since then, it has emerged that of the bonds purchased by Mr Martin’s firm, greater than 5bn rupees went to the regional Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) celebration which governs the southern state of Tamil Nadu the place Mr Martin began his enterprise. It’s not clear but who the remaining recipients are.

A better take a look at Mr Martin’s life reveals a captivating rags-to-riches story, as he went from working as a daily-wage labourer to operating a lottery empire that stretches throughout a number of Indian states in addition to the neighbouring nation of Bhutan.

But Mr Martin, 63, can also be seen as a controversial determine – he has been dogged by political scandals and has been accused by authorities of being concerned in monetary irregularities together with lottery fraud.

Mr Martin has not given any public statements because the electoral bonds knowledge was revealed. The BBC has emailed Future Gaming and messaged Mr Martin’s spouse, Leema Rose Martin, however has not acquired responses but.

Reports say Mr Martin was born in 1961 within the Andaman islands off India’s east coast. As a young person, he’s believed to have labored as a daily-wage labourer in present-day Myanmar. In the1980s, he returned to India and commenced working in a tea store in Tamil Nadu.

He was struck by the recognition of lottery tickets amongst all sections of Tamil Nadu’s inhabitants, however particularly the poor. It prompted him to begin the enterprise which might make him a millionaire.

Mr Martin opened his first store in Coimbatore metropolis and inside just a few years, overtook two rivals to grow to be the largest vendor of lottery tickets in Tamil Nadu.

Mr Martin scaled up the gross sales of what have been referred to as “two-digit” lottery tickets – scratch playing cards which revealed two digits that the customer might immediately test in opposition to successful numbers revealed via a stay telecast facilitated by his firm.

A political observer who spoke to the BBC on situation of anonymity remembers seeing individuals crowding earlier than small outlets, watching lottery attracts on “the smallest of TV sets”.

The draw of prompt cash led to larger gross sales – and, critics say, drove many into spoil.

Mr Martin’s lottery tickets quickly discovered a market in neighbouring Karnataka and Kerala states, and he later expanded the enterprise to northern and north-eastern India.

In a 2001 interview to rediff.com, Mr Martin mentioned that he bought 12 million lottery tickets each day. By then, his firm had agreements with a number of state governments for distributing lottery tickets.

The article claimed that Mr Martin paid huge sums each day – 350,000 rupees in gross sales tax to the Tamil Nadu authorities and 759,000 rupees upfront to the federal government of the north-eastern state of Sikkim – underscoring the thundering success of his enterprise.

“I succeeded because I grasped the psychology of the buyer and the tricks of the trade,” he mentioned in the identical interview.

But the article additionally famous that Mr Martin was going through an investigation by the income-tax division – prices listed in opposition to him included claiming the prize cash from unsold tickets and rigging lottery attracts. Mr Martin’s associates dismissed the allegations, accusing his rivals of teaming up with politicians to destroy his enterprise.

In 2003, Tamil Nadu’s then chief minister, J Jayalalithaa, banned the sale of lottery tickets, performing on reviews of individuals being financially ruined because of lotteries. This was an enormous blow to Mr Martin.

In 2011, once more when Jayalalithaa was in energy, he was arrested and spent some months in jail in a case associated to land-grabbing earlier than getting bail.

Mr Martin’s firm additionally faces instances of lottery fraud in states together with Kerala. In 2023, India’s monetary crimes unit mentioned it seized property and financial institution deposits value 4.5bn rupees after looking properties belonging to him and his associates in a case associated to lottery fraud in Sikkim state.

Mr Martin’s enchantment in opposition to the order was dismissed by a court docket the identical 12 months. He has not been convicted in any of the instances in opposition to him but.

Mr Martin has not spoken to the media concerning the allegations, however his firm’s web site states that Future Gaming “is known for its compliance towards rules and regulations” wherever it conducts enterprise.

According to the web site, Mr Martin has additionally diversified his enterprise into sectors corresponding to actual property, hospitality and metal.

Even earlier than the electoral bonds revelations, the businessman had made information for alleged connections with political events.

In 2007, a political scandal broke out in Kerala state when then communist chief minister VS Achuthanandan spoke out in opposition to his celebration’s newspaper accepting a donation of 20m rupees from Mr Martin – the celebration lastly returned the cash.

At the time, Mr Achuthanandan had launched a crackdown on unlawful lotteries within the state.

“His reasoning was that common people were losing lots of money and that there were many who had even died by suicide because they could not bear the losses they incurred from lotteries,” Joseph Mathew, who was an adviser to Mr Achuthanandan, told the BBC.

In 2011, Mr Martin produced a Tamil-language film based on Maxim Gorky’s novel Mother, for which DMK’s leader and former Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi wrote the script. Reports say the film’s budget was around 200m rupees, but it mostly received negative reviews.

In 2019, MK Stalin, who is now the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, filed a defamation case against a popular magazine called Junior Vikatan after it published a story accusing him of “negotiating a deal of 5bn rupees” with Mr Martin as donations for the DMK. Mr Stalin denied this, calling it a “figment of creativeness of Vikatan” and that Mr Martin had never donated to his party.

The electoral bonds data has now led the DMK’s rivals and political observers in Tamil Nadu to question why the party received donations from Mr Martin when lotteries are banned in the state. A DMK spokesperson did not respond to the BBC’s messages, but the party has said its government has made no concessions for Mr Martin’s company.

Mr Martin’s family members also have ties to different political parties – his son-in-law is a member of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panthers Party), which is part of a Congress-led opposition alliance against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), while his wife Leema has joined the Indhiya Jananayaga Katchi (Indian Democratic Party), which is an ally of the BJP.