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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday conducted pan-India searches at multiple locations in West Bengal, Sikkim, and Tamil Nadu in connection with financial fraud of lottery and the corruption case involving money laundering through lottery tickets to certain influential people.
The raids have been underway since Thursday morning in at the premises of suspects in West Bengal's Kolkata, Sikkim, and Tamil Nadu's Chennai and Coimbatore. The agency is probing a lottery scam case registered in 2012 against lottery baron Santiago Martin and others, in which the Sikkim government was allegedly cheated. The ED had earlier attached assets worth Rs 277.59 crore in the case. They included a large number of immovable properties in Tamil Nadu. On the basis of the charge sheets filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation, the ED had initiated a money laundering probe against Martin and his company, Future Gaming Solutions (P) Limited (presently Future Gaming and Hotel Services (P) Limited and formerly Martin Lottery Agencies Limited). The agency had then alleged that Martin and others conspired to make wrongful gains. They entered into an agreement with State government officials, in contravention of the Lottery Regulations Act, under which the company could avoid remitting the face value of lottery tickets sold in Kerala to the State exchequer as sale proceeds. An illegal gain of over Rs 910.30 crore was made by inflating the prize winning tickets' claims from April 1, 2009, to August 31, 2010, as alleged. In another case, the Enforcement Directorate in 2022 had also attached properties worth Rs 409.92 crore in the case against Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited and its various sub-distributors and area distributors for West Bengal. The ED probe is based on the cases registered by the Kolkata Police under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Lotteries (Regulation) Act. The attached assets are in the form of bank balance and mutual fund holdings. (ANI)
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