The On­line Gam­ing Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (OGAATT) has writ­ten an open let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert call­ing for a foren­sic au­dit in­to the op­er­a­tions at Nal­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) with par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the ac­count­ing sys­tem and de­part­ment.

“For many years, since 2019, and more­so with­in re­cent times, nu­mer­ous agents have been hav­ing and com­plain­ing about dis­crep­an­cies/dif­fer­ences in their week­ly set­tle­ment re­ports. The re­ports show fig­ures that are greater than what agents ac­tu­al­ly have in hand to de­posit,” the let­ter signed by OGAATT’s pres­i­dent Dean Per­sad stat­ed.

OGAATT stat­ed that in or­der to try and de­ter­mine if the prob­lem was as a re­sult of their ac­tions, some agents have made ad­just­ments on their end.

“Some of these ad­just­ments are:

1) work­ing the ma­chines (ter­mi­nals) them­selves,

2) tem­porar­i­ly stopped tak­ing In­stant Mon­ey Games (scratch),

3) pay for scratch in ad­vance and

4) change their ma­chines,” the let­ter stat­ed.

De­spite these ad­just­ments the prob­lem still per­sist­ed, Per­sad stat­ed.

“On the oth­er hand, to find out if the prob­lem lies on NL­CBs end agents, in­clud­ing my­self, have been call­ing on NL­CB to pro­vide us with print out of trans­ac­tions for par­tic­u­lar pe­ri­ods.

“This has fall­en on deaf ears and NL­CB adamant­ly re­fus­es, even af­ter nu­mer­ous re­quests, to pro­vide these re­ports to agents. NL­CB needs to al­lay the fears and sus­pi­cions of agents by pro­vid­ing these re­ports if there is noth­ing wrong on their end,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The let­ter claimed that there are “odd and ques­tion­able en­tries” that need to be clin­i­cal­ly au­dit­ed to see if there is an ac­count­ing “glitch.”

“Agents are al­ready fac­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in meet­ing rents, wages, util­i­ties, in­sur­ance, fu­el prices and the gen­er­al in­crease in costs of liv­ing.

“To be sad­dled with pay­ing ex­tra mon­ey to NL­CB, which may not be ac­tu­al­ly ow­ing to NL­CB, is un­fair, harsh and may be il­le­gal,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The OGAATT stat­ed that are gaps in the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture of NL­CB at the mo­ment which has ex­ac­er­bat­ed the prob­lem.

“These are po­si­tions that have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of run­ning the af­fairs at NL­CB at a man­age­r­i­al lev­el. Present­ly things are at a stand­still with im­por­tant de­ci­sions and is­sues in lim­bo.

“The Board is al­so lim­it­ed and stymied in mak­ing de­ci­sions and there is a dis­con­nect be­tween the board, which is po­lit­i­cal, and man­age­ment, which is pub­lic ser­vants com­ing through the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ty Ser­vice Com­mis­sion,” the OGAATT stat­ed.

The OGAATT is call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance or any rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ty to im­ple­ment the fol­low­ing mea­sures on be­half of agents:

1) Con­duct a clin­i­cal and foren­sic au­dit in­to the Ac­counts De­part­ment at NL­CB.

2) This au­dit must pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to dis­crep­an­cies in week­ly set­tle­ment fig­ures and du­pli­ca­tions of trans­ac­tions.

3) Let agents de­posit their cash in hand un­til the sit­u­a­tion is re­solved.

4) Re­moval of the $100 week­ly fee.

5) Re­moval of the $500 re­ac­ti­va­tion fee.

6) Re­moval of in­ter­est on late de­posits as this is the fault of the banks and not the agents.

7) In­crease in com­mis­sions to 12 per cent.

8) Re­view of the con­tract.