At Rs 509 crore, ‘Lottery King’ Santiago Martin is DMK’s biggest donor through electoral bonds

‘Lottery King’ Santiago Martin’s company Future Gaming and Hotel Services Private Ltd was the biggest donor to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

As per numbers filed by the DMK to the Supreme Court in a sealed cover, the party received Rs 656.5 crore through electoral bonds between April 2019 and November 2023, out of which Rs 509 crore was donated the Coimbatore-based Future Gaming.

Project Electoral Bond’s detailed profile of Santiago Martin had revealed his ties with the DMK. The disclosures made by the Election Commission earlier revealed that Martin topped the list of electoral bonds buyers, purchasing bonds worth Rs 1,368 crore. Who received the remaining bonds worth Rs 859 crore given by Martin is not known yet.  

DMK’s second highest donor through EBs is Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd, which donated Rs 105 crore to the party. India Cements, owned by former BCCI chief N Srinivasan, donated Rs 14 crore, followed by Sun TV Network Private Limited which donated Rs 10 crore. 

These new facts emerged after the Election Commission today released a set of electoral bond data that was handed over to the Supreme Court in November 2023 in a sealed cover. Parties submitted this data after the top court issued a direction to them to submit the details of donations received through electoral bonds.  

Most political parties like the BJP, Congress, BRS and others only revealed to the Election Commission the number of electoral bonds and the amounts received through them on different dates. However, the DMK, AIADMK and JDS named donors in their letters to the EC.

According to the letter written by DMK treasurer TR Baalu, though the electoral bonds scheme does not require the details of the donor to be furnished to the party encashing the bonds, the donors to the DMK did reveal themselves nonetheless.  

Between April 2019 and March 2020, the DMK received Rs 45.50 crore from corporates like India Cements, MEIL, Ramco Cements, Apollo group, LMW company, Birla group, Triveni group and IRB. In October 2020, the party received Rs 80 crore from two companies: Future Gaming and Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd. It was between April 2021 and January 2022 that the DMK received the highest donations through EBs – Rs 306 crore. From April 2023 to November 2023, the party received another Rs 65 crore.

Future Gaming started purchasing electoral bonds in October 2020 and the first purchase of electoral bonds for Rs 60 crore was donated to the DMK.

This report is part of a collaborative project involving three news organisations – Newslaundry, Scroll, The News Minute – and several independent journalists.

Project Electoral Bond includes Aban Usmani, Anand Mangnale, Anisha Sheth, Anjana Meenakshi, Ayush Tiwari, Azeefa Fathima, Basant Kumar, Dhanya Rajendran, Jayashree Arunachalam, Joyal George, M Rajshekhar, Maria Teresa Raju, Nandini Chandrashekhar, Neel Madhav, Nikita Saxena, Parth MN, Pooja Prasanna, Prajwal Bhat, Prateek Goyal, Pratyush Deep, Ragamalika Karthikeyan, Raman Kirpal, Ravi Nair, Sachi Hegde, Shabbir Ahmed, Shivnarayan Rajpurohit, Siddhartha Mishra, Supriya Sharma, Sudipto Mondal, Tabassum Barnagarwala and Vaishnavi Rathore.

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