ED seizes Rs 12.41 crore in money laundering case against TN 'lottery king' Santiago Martin

CHENNAI: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has seized Rs 12.41 crore in cash during recent searches at premises linked to Chennai-based 'lottery king' Santiago Martin, his family members and associates in connection with a money laundering case.

During the search operations, various incriminating documents, cash worth 12.41 crore and digital devices were seized while fixed deposits worth Rs 6.42 crore were frozen, the ED said on Monday.

At least 22 premises linked to Martin, his entity Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited, and associates in Chennai and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Faridabad in Haryana, Ludhiana in Punjab, Kolkata in West Bengal, and Meghalaya were searched, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002.

The ED had also raided the premises of properties belonging of Martin's son-in-law and VKC leader Aadhav Arjuna.

Last week, the ED had seized Rs 8.8 crore in cash from Martin's corporate office.

The recent ED searches came about after the Madras High Court recently allowed the federal agency to proceed against Martin as the Tamil Nadu Police had decided to close the predicate or primary FIR against him and a few others and a lower court accepted this police plea.

A clutch of police FIRs have been taken into cognisance by the ED to initiate the latest action against Martin and his business network for lottery "fraud" and "illegal" sale of lottery. The agency had searched him earlier too.

The federal agency last year attached assets worth about Rs 457 crore in a case against Martin linked to an alleged loss of over Rs 900 crore to the Sikkim government by fraudulent sale of the state lottery in Kerala.

Future Gaming Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. is the master distributor of Sikkim lotteries and the ED has been investigating Martin, known as 'lottery king' in Tamil Nadu, since 2019.

(With additional inputs from PTI)