The Enforcement Directorate has attached properties worth ₹409.92 crore in the case against Future Gaming & 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.
Future Gaming & Hotel Services is the sole distributor of "paper lottery" organised by Sikkim and Nagaland, which runs the popular "Dear Lottery".
According to the ED, the company and its various sub-distributors/area-distributors illegally retained unsold lottery tickets and claimed top prizes on such tickets in the pre-Goods & Services Tax period up to 2017. "Sale proceeds of lottery tickets have been illegally diverted towards gifts and incentives by modifying the prize structure of lottery schemes without any approval from the organising State governments," it said.
In this manner, as alleged, Future Gaming and its sub-distributor companies illegally claimed about ₹400 crore from 2014 to 2017.
In another lottery scam case against Santiago Martin and others, in which the Sikkim government was allegedly cheated, the ED had earlier attached assets worth ₹277.59 crore. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 ₹910.30 crore was made by inflating the prize winning tickets' claims from April 1, 2009, to August 31,2010, as alleged.
