Teashop to jackpot, here's how Santiago Martin played to win

A few days ago, when the Election Commission released the list of donors to political parties, the name on top of it was Santiago Martin, founder of Future Gaming Private Limited, who donated Rs 1,368 crore in electoral bonds. So, who is Santiago Martin, the suave, smooth-talking 'lottery king' from Coimbatore?

Let's rewind to the 1980s when the sale of lottery tickets was a profitable business in Tamil Nadu. There were regional players such as Deccan Agencies in Chennai, K A S Sekar in Madurai and his brother Ramadas in Trichy.



It was around this time that Martin (born in the Andamans in 1961), returned to India from Myanmar where he worked as a daily wager. Martin settled in Coimbatore where his sister lived, and began working in a tea shop at Tatabad, near a store his parents owned. He would spend his days observing the craze for lottery tickets. When he decided to start a shop, he saw lottery tickets as the fastest route to profts.

"The lottery trade was a double bonanza for him," says Martin’s wife Leema Rose. "Sales grew and quite often prizes from unsold tickets would also land in his pockets." In 1987, the year he got married, Martin, 26, had opened five lottery shops in Coimbatore. He then ventured into printing tickets in 1988, launching his own lottery business with multiple brands and higher prize offerings.



In the 1990s, Martin had emerged the market leader in TN. But he still had turf wars with Sekar. Perhaps, it was due to this rivalry that the first blow to his business as well as the lottery trade in TN came. In 2003, then chief minister J Jayalalithaa banned the lottery trade in the state after she received reports of tickets wreaking havoc on the families of the poor. Martin immediately branched out into Karnataka, Kerala, the northeast and neighbouring Bhutan.

"Martin is great at reading people’s minds," says a family friend. What made him ‘lottery king’ was his ability to assess people and navigate his way through the corridors of power.

By the late 2000s, Martin had built a formidable empire and was rubbing shoulders with whos who of politics in TN and at one point was seen as being close to the DMK. Jayalalithaa's lottery ban was rumoured to have been because of Martin's closeness to DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi. Martin also ran into controversy in 2008 after charges cropped up that he donated Rs 2cr to CPM’s mouthpiece Desabimani in Kerala. His network was so wide, that complaints poured in that several officers in the northeast were on his payroll.




He made headlines for allegedly defrauding the Sikkim govt from 2008 to 2010 and, according to the enforcement directorate (ED) making 'unlawful gains of Rs 910 crore'. He's been on the income tax department and ED radar since.

"Chief ministers would meet him even when he did not have an appointment," says a Coimbatore-based industrialist. "He was generous with donations, not lavish." The early-rising, health-conscious Martin, say friends, believed every rupee counts.

In 2011, Martin produced the film 'Ilaignan', written by Karunanidhi, which flopped, marking the beginning and end of his movie career. However, the repercussions of his association with Karunanidhi outweighed the film’s losses. In 2011, a few months after the AIADMK came to power, Martin was arrested in a land grab case and lodged at Vellore central prison. He was charged with 14 cases of land grabbing, illegal lottery sales and cheating in various parts of the state in 2011-2012. He spent eight months in various jails until he was released on May 7, 2012.



Following the arrest, Martin’s wife joined politics and was made state deputy general secretary of Indhiya Jananayaka Katchi (IJK). When Modi visited TN in 2014, Leema Rose was seen on the dais with him.
Years later, their elder son Charles Jose joined the BJP, while his brother Tyson Martin formed his own party, the 'Tamilar Vidiyal Katchi'.

Martin's son-in-law, Adhav Arjun, recently joined the VCK. Martin steered clear of politics, concentrating solely on new ventures in real estate, education and media, though he didn’t achieve the same level of success as in the lottery business.

"Martin was the highest individual taxpayer in India in 2002-2003. He and his group of companies collectively have paid taxes of Rs 23,199cr as GST from July 2017 to Sept 2023 (Rs 5,000 crore a year)," said N Nagappan of Future Gaming in a statement in 2023, and that Martin had paid about Rs 4,577 crore as income tax between 1985 and 2023.
People close to him have lost count of his cases. He was last in the news in Oct 2023 when I-T officials searched his Coimbatore residence.

"Maybe the searches were meant to intimidate. But we conduct our businesses legally," says Leema Rose.
Martin has not reacted to the controversy. But those who know him say he always finds a way to wriggle out of a difficult situation. And they’re willing to bet on that.