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Tamilnadu is Trapped ☄️☄️☄️
By its own people's idiocracy
As you keep digging, 1000's of scams linked to the illegal lottery family continue to surface
Tamil Nadu has been trapped by the “new moon darkness”:
Former IPS officer Tilakavathi is said to be a close relative (like an aunt) of Aadhav Arjuna. What is surprising about the police and criminals sharing close family ties? Now, Aadhav Arjuna being made the minister of the Public Works Department is considered dangerous.
Although Aadhav Arjuna’s wife Daisy & his brother-in-law Charles Martin have denied any connection between his political decisions and their family, recent events suggest otherwise. Aadhav Arjuna’s aunt Leema Rose welcomed Vijay with flowers, and later, as an AIADMK MLA, supported Vijay’s govt during the trust vote. This has only strengthened suspicions that the family’s denials are false.
The same Leema Rose allegedly financed MLA horse-trading by stitching cash into sofas & sending them secretly. Ironically, she later joined Jayalalithaa’s party — the very party that had banned lottery tickets in TN & hurt the Martin family’s business interests. This appears to be pure opportunism.
The pending cases against lottery kingpin Martin & his wife Leema Rose have not reached a conclusion because, according to critics, they have distributed funds generously to ruling & opposition parties alike, gaining influence everywhere.
Although the Martin family has reportedly been donating to political parties since 2007, the scale of donations increased sharply after Enforcement Directorate (ED) raids. Out of the ₹1,368 crore donated by Future Gaming through electoral bonds, nearly 50% was allegedly donated immediately after intense ED raids by central agencies.
On April 2, 2022, the Enforcement Directorate conducted raids in connection with a lottery fraud investigation and froze movable assets worth ₹409.92 crore belonging to Future Gaming & its subsidiaries. Just 5 days later, on April 7, 2022, Future Gaming purchased electoral bonds worth ₹100 crore in a single day — one of the company’s largest ever single-day transactions up to that point.
In September 2023, when the ED officially filed its prosecution complaint under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in a Kolkata court, the company had already routed several more hundreds of crores through the electoral bond system.
The Martin family has now moved beyond indirectly funding politics & has allegedly become directly involved in power and governance. Their influence and dominance are said to extend across political parties.
According to data from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Leema Rose Martin (DIN 00029522) is listed as a director, partner, or associated member in 240 companies and LLPs. Santiago Martin (DIN 00029458) is listed in 267 such entities.
Despite authorities allegedly identifying over 350 shell companies & suspicious business structures involving assets worth 1000s of crores, the courts have not yet declared the Martin family as economic offenders. Had they been declared so, their lottery and business operations could have been frozen entirely. Critics argue that because the Modi government has aligned itself with such accused individuals, the Martin family continues operating as directors, partners, and owners of shell companies, allegedly carrying on fraud and financial exploitation. It would not be surprising, they say, if government-approved lottery tickets return to Tamil Nadu.
There is a difference between a capitalist political party receiving funds from an illegal lottery businessman & the illegal lottery businessman directly participating in governance. Those with a dialectical perspective, the writer argues, will see these as 2 different things. Treating both as the same reflects a simplistic perspective. However, according to the author, a corrupt DMK govt cannot be replaced by a govt run entirely by a corrupt illegal lottery family.
Courtesy: Baktha Vijayakumar
English
