MUMBAI: India’s largest known political donor is a lottery company which has been the subject of fraud and tax evasion probes, according to data published weeks before elections.

The election commission published late on Thursday a list detailing buyers of electoral bonds, a controversial funding scheme that has helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party build an immense campaign war chest dwarfing its rivals.

Electoral bonds account for the lion’s share of political donations in India, but the Supreme Court ruled them illegal last month, saying the scheme violated the right of voters to know who was financing their representatives.

Nearly $165 million of the bonds issued between April 2019 and January of this year, or around 11 per cent of the total, were bought by a company helmed by Santiago Martin, dubbed the “Lottery King” by Indian media.

The data shows that his Future Gaming and Hotel Services, a company that has operated lotteries around the country, was the single biggest buyer of electoral bonds for the period. Since 2011 Martin and his company have been subject to several investigations on suspicion of unpaid income tax, money laundering and fraud, according to media reports.

Before the electoral bonds scheme was struck down, critics said it reduced transparency by leaving the public unable to scrutinise whether donors had received political favours in return for their cash.

Lawmaker Jairam Ramesh of the opposition Congress party said the data showed Martin’s company had donated to political parties after being raided by investigators on at least two occasions.

“There are many cases of companies that have donated electoral bonds, and immediately afterwards gotten huge benefits from the government,” he wrote in a post on social media platform X.

Martin’s company is one of 14 among the top 30 donors under the electoral bond scheme that have reportedly been targets of criminal investigations.

Published in Dawn, March 16th, 2024