Someone in Chongqing Municipality is smiling today after winning the country's biggest sports lottery jackpot worth 82.34 million yuan (US$11.86 million).

The winner spent 630 yuan on 21 tickets with an identical combination of nine numbers.

The person, whose identity has not been released, bought the tickets around 2:35 pm yesterday in Chongqing's Changshou District to win the record prize in the nationwide Super Lotto, Sina.com reported today.

The previous sports jackpot record was 41.7 million yuan and was won by someone in Henan Province in August, the report said.

A civil servant in Gansu Province won 114 million yuan in a welfare lottery on November 27, making him the luckiest lottery winner ever in the country, according to previous reports.

Lotteries have generated huge economic and social returns in China in the past two decades.

A total of 363 billion yuan worth of lottery tickets had been sold by the end of last year, and more than a third of the money was spent on public welfare including sports facilities, education and health care for the handicapped.

But the industry has also encountered growing problems. Two lottery outlet owners in Hebei Province were charged last year after the country's largest bank theft, which involved 51 million yuan.

The owners allegedly provided former bank employees Ren Xiaofeng and Ma Xiangjing with bags to transfer bundles of cash.

Ren and Ma stole 51 million yuan from the bank and spent most of the money on lottery tickets at the owner's outlets. Ren and Ma were sentenced to death last year.

In 2004, several people were found guilty of manipulating a scratch-and-win sports lottery in Shaanxi Province and were sentenced to prison.

(Shanghai Daily April 24, 2008)