'Lottery king' Santiago Martin case: Supreme Court restrains ED from copying laptop, mobile data
Future Gaming, owned by Santiago Martin, has been a prominent donor of electoral bonds, contributing ₹1,368 crore between 2019 and 2024.
The Supreme Court has restrained the Enforcement Directorate (ED) from accessing or copying content from digital devices seized during searches on "lottery king" Santiago Martin, his family, and employees, The Indian Express reported.
The searches, conducted across 22 locations in six states in November, followed a complaint by Meghalaya Police accusing Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Limited of "illegally" monopolising the state’s lottery business. The raids led to the recovery of ₹12.41 crore in cash.
Future Gaming, owned by Martin, has been a prominent donor of electoral bonds, contributing ₹1,368 crore between 2019 and 2024. The Trinamool Congress was the largest beneficiary, receiving ₹542 crore, followed by the DMK with ₹503 crore. The YSR Congress and BJP redeemed ₹154 crore and ₹100 crore, respectively.
The Supreme Court's two-page order, issued by Justices Abhay S Oka and Pankaj Mithal on December 13, instructed the ED not to access data from the seized electronic devices, which include 17 mobile phones, hard drives, pen drives, and email backups, The Indian Express report said. The court also stayed the ED summons under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) requiring individuals to appear for data extraction from their devices, it added.
The petitioners argued that unrestricted access to personal digital devices violated their fundamental right to privacy, emphasising that such devices often store deeply personal and sensitive information.
Lawyer Rohini Musa, representing Future Gaming, described the ruling as a potential precedent for other ongoing cases.
The ED, however, downplayed the impact of the ruling, with senior officials calling it “unprecedented but not a major setback”. They noted the agency had already gathered significant evidence, including properties worth ₹622 crore linked to Future Gaming, the newspaper reported.
ED raids in November
In November, the ED seized more than ₹12 crore of “unexplained” cash and frozen fixed deposits worth ₹6.42 crore during multi-state searches against Santiago Martin and his associates.
The federal agency raided 22 premises spread across Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya and Punjab, including four lottery tickets printing presses in the case against Martin and his companies Future Gaming, Hotel Services Private Limited and some other associates.
The ED said its probe found that “90 per cent of the business of the company is in lottery tickets of ₹6 face value, against which most of the prizes were below ₹10,000, which is non-taxable”.
"No proper record was maintained by the company regarding prize winners and, sold and unsold tickets," the ED said.
Lottery schemes were designed by the company in such a way that a "substantial" profit goes to the company and the organising state gets a “very small portion” of the revenue, it claimed.
Main allegations against the group
The main allegations against the group are that they “illegally” captured the lottery market by not allowing others to operate, they sold “fake” lottery tickets, manipulated winning prizes and purchased big prize winning tickets against cash payment for converting black money into white leading to "huge loss" to the exchequer and general public, the ED said.
The agency said it seized "unexplained" cash of ₹12.41 crore, digital devices and “incriminating” documents and froze fixed deposits of ₹6.42 crore during the raids.
A charge sheet has been filed by the ED in the Kerala Police case against Martin and his companies, while attaching assets worth ₹622 crore.
Future Gaming Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. was the master distributor of Sikkim lotteries and the ED has been investigating Martin, known as “lottery king” in Tamil Nadu, since 2019.
