With en­er­gy prices re­main­ing low, the Gov­ern­ment has no choice but to re­ly on an ef­fi­cient tax sys­tem to gen­er­ate funds, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said on Ju­ly 4.

He said while the Gov­ern­ment has “high­ways to be built, roads to be built,” the coun­try is be­ing short changed as more than 40 per cent of ex­pect­ed tax earn­ings are not be­ing col­lect­ed. “The law-abid­ing salary-earn­ing per­son pays tax­es up­front but there are oth­er peo­ple in the coun­try who ben­e­fit far more than you who are get­ting away through foul means by not pay­ing their tax­es,” the PM said.

For decades, an il­le­gal gam­bling op­er­a­tion mim­ic­k­ing Play Whe has robbed the coun­try of mil­lions in po­ten­tial tax earn­ings.

De­spite this, up­wards of 300 booths op­er­at­ed by main­ly Chi­nese na­tion­als as well as T&T na­tion­als con­tin­ue to flour­ish across the coun­try with im­puni­ty. In most in­stances, these booths do not con­ceal what is tak­ing place with­in them. In­stead, they con­duct busi­ness in the open.

Plas­tered on their walls are of­fer­ings of odds that the le­gal NL­CB booths can­not com­pete with. NL­CB booths of­fer $26 for every dol­lar on a win­ning bet, the il­le­gal op­er­a­tors of­fer a min­i­mum of $34. With the of­fer of bet­ter odds, and when com­pared to the amount made by le­gal NL­CB op­er­a­tors, each il­le­gal booth can rake in more than $10,000 a day, un­taxed.

Ac­cord­ing to a source at the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board, the il­le­gal game is worth more than $1.3 bil­lion per year.

Pres­i­dent of the Elec­tron­ic Lot­to Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Alan Camp­bell sug­gest­ed that fig­ure is con­ser­v­a­tive, putting the val­ue at more than $3 bil­lion. To put this fig­ure in­to con­text, that es­ti­mat­ed val­ue is greater than the 2019-2020 bud­get al­lo­ca­tion for the fol­low­ing min­istries: Pub­lic Util­i­ties ($3.047 bil­lion), Works and Trans­port($2.956 bil­lion), Hous­ing ($1.007 bil­lion), Agri­cul­ture ($0.708 bil­lion) and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment ($2.469 bil­lion).

It al­so dwarfs To­ba­go’s en­tire al­lo­ca­tion of $2.469 bil­lion, if the es­ti­mate is ac­cu­rate.

Giv­en the eco­nom­ic im­pact of COVID-19 and com­plaints by le­git­i­mate NL­CB booth op­er­a­tors who are los­ing in­come, the NL­CB and T&T Po­lice Ser­vice are re­port­ed­ly tak­ing steps to crack down on the in­dus­try. But why is it tak­ing so long?

Asked to de­scribe those be­hind the in­dus­try, an NL­CB source used the fol­low­ing de­scrip­tions: “Big and dan­ger­ous; Not small man; Syn­di­cate and Or­gan­ised; Deep Pock­ets.”

Ac­cord­ing to nu­mer­ous sources, it is a well-known Chi­nese op­er­a­tion that prof­its most. How­ev­er, we are al­so re­li­ably in­formed that there is one T&T na­tion­al who owns as many as 100 of the il­le­gal booths.

The 1,120 le­gal booths in T&T, run by the NL­CB, op­er­ate from 6 am to 7 pm some days and 6 am to 8.30 pm on oth­er days.

Too Easy to Play

Span­ning the length and breadth of the coun­try, there are more than 300 il­le­gal booths.

Di­vid­ing an es­ti­mat­ed val­ue of the en­tire in­dus­try, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $3 bil­lion by 300 out­lets, it works out to an as­ton­ish­ing val­ue of close to $11,000,000 each.

Lo­cat­ed in Port-of-Spain, an il­le­gal booth op­er­ates night and day. The il­le­gal booth is lo­cat­ed me­tres away from a po­lice sta­tion, about a sev­en-minute walk.

On its open door, a large sign on a flu­o­res­cent piece of bris­tol board ad­ver­tised a re­turn of $34 for every win­ning $1, and there’s even Mega­Ball. The Mega­Ball of­fered a re­turn of $70 to the $1.

In Port-of-Spain, next to a Chi­nese gro­cery, the booth is no big­ger than eight-feet-by-eight-feet in di­men­sion.

At­tempt­ing to see how easy it is to play, I walked in­side.

Be­hind the counter were two Venezue­lan na­tion­als–their Eng­lish far from the best.

In the small room they are in, lo­cat­ed be­hind what ap­pears to be bul­let-proof glass, I spot­ted com­put­ers and oth­er elab­o­rate pieces of equip­ment.

The com­put­er, from the looks of it, was the ap­pa­ra­tus used to record and tab­u­late bets.

Two cus­tomers stood be­fore me in the line. It was clear this was part of their rou­tine. They were no strangers to play­ing.

A man who walked in, un­sure of what the process to play is like, asked one of the cus­tomers, "Boss, where did you get that form from?"

"Right over the road. Just go to that shop over there and ask them for a form," he replied.

He was even gen­er­ous enough to point in the di­rec­tion of a Chi­nese store on the op­po­site side of the road.

From my ob­ser­va­tion, the process was de­lib­er­ate­ly mud­dy. I fol­lowed.

Un­able to se­cure a form, the man asked the two clerks for a form, but they de­clined.

My sec­ond at­tempt to see some­one play would be far sim­pler.

Lo­cat­ed in the East, an­oth­er of the il­le­gal booths can be found me­tres away from a po­lice sta­tion. That’s about a one-minute walk.

Like the first booth, this one is al­so lo­cat­ed next to a Chi­nese gro­cery.

Look­ing in­side there was a com­put­er, phone and a seat, on­ly one man was there. With just a hole in the wall, there’s room to do lit­tle else than call a bet on the out­side.

On the ex­te­ri­or of the wall was a chart show­ing re­cent re­sults in a colour­ful text. There was al­so a poster show­ing the odds–$34 for each win­ning $1 bet. $70 for Mega­Ball.

Around two min­utes lat­er, a clerk fi­nal­ly showed up.

"What your bet?" asks a Chi­nese man.

The man says, "$5 on 20; $5 on 25.

With­in sec­onds, they ex­changed the mon­ey and he got a tick­et.

Just like that, in that sim­ple process, they al­leged­ly de­fraud­ed the Gov­ern­ment of tax­es by by­pass­ing the NL­CB.

De­spite the sim­plic­i­ty of play­ing, and de­spite the prox­im­i­ty of the booths to in­sti­tu­tions re­spon­si­ble to up­hold the law, this hap­pens hun­dreds of times every day at booths na­tion­wide.

With the il­le­gal in­dus­try con­tin­u­ing to go unchecked, its prof­its have sur­passed the NL­CB’s Play Whe earn­ings, ac­cord­ing to Camp­bell.

How­ev­er, with es­ti­mates of the le­gal game be­ing worth as much as $3 bil­lion a year, it match­es NL­CB’s to­tal rev­enue for 2018.

In 2019 the com­pa­ny's chair­man Eu­stance Nan­cis re­port­ed earn­ings of $3 bil­lion for 2018.

"There are peo­ple in high stand­ings who are sup­port­ing the il­le­gal op­er­a­tors. They have some­thing to gain from it, and it’s not on­ly Chi­nese peo­ple in­volved as il­le­gal op­er­a­tors, but there’s al­so a lo­cal with more than 100 il­le­gal booths," Camp­bell said.

"It is mon­ey laun­der­ing in a big, big way. They are send­ing the mon­ey out of the coun­try."

Lot­to Agents: It’s Time to Act

Tak­ing no­tice of the grow­ing threat that these il­le­gal booths posed to their liveli­hoods, in Sep­tem­ber 2011 Lot­to agents came to­geth­er to form the Elec­tron­ic Lot­to Agents As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T.

De­spite the pow­er­ful play­ers in­volved, the as­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Alan Camp­bell has nev­er shied away from tak­ing on the il­le­gal in­dus­try.

Over the years, he said that he and the as­so­ci­a­tion had dis­cus­sions with three po­lice com­mis­sion­ers about the is­sue–for­mer act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, as well as cur­rent Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith.

Ac­cord­ing to Camp­bell, one com­mis­sion­er said he wasn’t aware of the is­sue, while the oth­er said he didn’t have suf­fi­cient po­lice of­fi­cers to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion.

Af­ter writ­ing to Com­mis­sion­er Grif­fith last year, they were told by an act­ing deputy com­mis­sion­er of po­lice that a spe­cial squad was go­ing to be formed to get some­thing done fi­nal­ly.

That is yet to ma­te­ri­alise.

Mon­ey laun­der­ing is a crime

*Ac­cord­ing to Sec­tion 45 of the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act, a per­son who knows or has rea­son­able grounds to sus­pect that prop­er­ty is crim­i­nal prop­er­ty and who en­gages di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly, in a trans­ac­tion that in­volves that crim­i­nal prop­er­ty; or re­ceives, pos­sess­es, con­ceals, dis­pos­es of, dis­guis­es, trans­fers, brings in­to, or sends out of Trinidad and To­ba­go, that crim­i­nal prop­er­ty; or con­verts, trans­fers or re­moves from Trinidad and To­ba­go that crim­i­nal prop­er­ty, com­mits an of­fence of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

*Crim­i­nal prop­er­ty is any prop­er­ty de­rived from crim­i­nal con­duct.

*A per­son who com­mits an of­fence un­der Sec­tion 45 is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $25,000,000 and im­pris­on­ment for 15 years.

*On con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment, the per­son is li­able to a fine of $50,000,000 and im­pris­on­ment for 30 years.

Dur­ing its five years in of­fice, the Gov­ern­ment has stat­ed nu­mer­ous times that it is go­ing af­ter peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions guilty of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

Ear­li­er this year, dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary de­bate on the Gam­bling, Gam­ing and Bet­ting Bill 2016, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi cit­ed re­ports from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund which sug­gest­ed there was poor reg­u­la­tion of the gam­bling in­dus­try in T&T.

The AG called for mea­sures to en­sure that po­lice could in­ves­ti­gate the in­sti­tu­tions prop­er­ly, as there was a lot of room for un­reg­u­lat­ed casi­nos to ben­e­fit from mon­ey laun­der­ing.

"...the IMF says T&T is the on­ly coun­try in the world with an econ­o­my of our size to have an un­su­per­vised reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ment," he said.

Al-Rawi, speak­ing in Feb­ru­ary, claimed as a re­sult of re­cent laws aimed at tack­ling mon­ey laun­der­ing, more than $36.8 mil­lion in cash was seized, with more than 17 cas­es be­fore the courts.

In May of this year, the Gov­ern­ment at­tempt­ed to pass the Gam­bling (Gam­ing and Bet­ting) Con­trol Bill, claim­ing it was to strength­en reg­u­la­tions in the in­dus­try.

The Op­po­si­tion, how­ev­er, cit­ing is­sues with as­pects of the bill, ab­stained and the bill was not passed in the form in­tend­ed.

Op­er­at­ing with im­puni­ty

With­out reg­u­la­tion, the lev­el of im­puni­ty of the il­le­gal Play Whe op­er­a­tions is now to such a de­gree that they are op­er­at­ing as open­ly as any le­git­imised busi­ness, ac­cord­ing to Camp­bell.

He said the il­le­gal booths are even seek­ing guid­ance from au­thor­i­ties to en­sure COVID-19 pub­lic health pre­cau­tions are in place.

They are al­so run­ning a for­eign ex­change black mar­ket, he added.

"If you go with US$3, you get about TT$30 worth of bet. So, they are buy­ing the US that way," the Elec­tron­ic Lot­to Agents As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent said.

Camp­bell be­lieved that those in au­thor­i­ty are scared to look in­to the ring be­cause of the pow­er of those in­volved.

Camp­bell claimed that some years ago an NL­CB of­fi­cial "told us at a meet­ing that there’s an or­gan­i­sa­tion (name called) in­volved. He said, 'my life is worth some­thing.' He said, 'I don’t want to get mixed up with them.'"

As a lot­to agent in east Trinidad, Keisha, whose name was changed be­cause she was con­cerned about her safe­ty, said with the on­set of COVID-19, she has lost 50 per cent of her earn­ings. That ad­di­tion­al loss is, of course, in con­junc­tion with the cuts in her rev­enue caused by the il­le­gal booth with­in walk­ing dis­tance from her.

Un­like those op­er­a­tors, she pays tax.

And, as a re­sult of these loss­es, she had to cut her em­ploy­ee hours.

"It sends my blood pres­sure up. I called 800-TIPS, and I called the po­lice sta­tion to re­port it," she said.

"They are do­ing it so bold­face. All the mon­ey they are mak­ing, they are not keep­ing it here in T&T, they are send­ing it back. And our gov­ern­ment is not even con­cerned."

One agent said he too has called the NL­CB and Po­lice Ser­vice on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions to re­port the op­er­a­tions. He al­so claimed the re­ports nev­er yield­ed any re­sults.

"It’s big­ger than the NL­CB. They are pow­er­less to do any­thing," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Camp­bell, the Gam­bling and Bet­ting Act must be amend­ed to tack­le the il­le­gal Play Whe op­er­a­tion.

De­spite the large sums of mon­ey in­volved and, by ex­ten­sion, the po­ten­tial tax earn­ings lost by the State, un­der the cur­rent act, guilty par­ties are on­ly li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $3,000 or im­pris­on­ment for 12 months.

Hard­ly daunt­ing, con­sid­er­ing il­le­gal booths can gen­er­ate up­wards of three times the fine per day, un­taxed.

Ques­tions sent to po­lice

Guardian Me­dia sent ques­tions on Thurs­day to the Po­lice Ser­vice's Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment. The ques­tions sought to find out if the TTPS was cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing il­le­gal Play Whe and whether the ser­vice was aware of claims of wrong­do­ing by of­fi­cers. The de­part­ment ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt of the email on Fri­day and promised to re­spond. There was no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.

Whe Whe His­to­ry

The fol­low­ing his­tor­i­cal ac­count was writ­ten by so­ci­ol­o­gist and UWI Re­search Fel­low, Dr Roy Mc­Cree. It al­so con­tains in­for­ma­tion based on re­search by oth­er re­searchers. It was edit­ed by Guardian Me­dia.

Start­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in 1994, Play Whe has its roots in the Chi­nese game of Whe Whe, which was in­tro­duced to T&T in the 19th cen­tu­ry.

While the game has al­ways been known as Whe Whe, sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic re­searchers have sug­gest­ed that its orig­i­nal name may have been Mar­chong, Chi­napoo and Pak­ka Kin.

It was orig­i­nal­ly spelt as Whe Whe in French fash­ion. This could be ex­plained by the fact that at the time of Chi­nese mi­gra­tion to the is­land, French was the dom­i­nant lan­guage. In par­tic­u­lar, a French cre­ole vari­ant, known as pa­tois, was spo­ken among the black work­ing class.

How­ev­er, over time, as the use of the lan­guage waned on the is­land, the word was spelt with­out the writ­ten French ac­cents al­though the in­to­na­tion re­mained.

The orig­i­nal game had sev­er­al ma­jor char­ac­ter­is­tics re­lat­ed to its nu­mer­i­cal char­ac­ter, in­clud­ing their sym­bols, how num­bers are cho­sen and its or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The game is still based on the num­bers from 1 to 36, known as marks. Each mark may rep­re­sent a par­tic­u­lar hu­man, non-hu­man or inan­i­mate sym­bol, which in­cludes men, women, an­i­mals, rep­tiles, even in­sects and body parts.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, each mark had a part­ner and even spir­it which were in ef­fect, oth­er marks.

Sev­er­al meth­ods were used by pun­ters or play­ers to choose a par­tic­u­lar mark. These in­clud­ed line or nu­mer­i­cal charts, body charts–still seen at of­fi­cial Play Whe out­lets; dreams, hunch­es and par­tic­u­lar events which may sug­gest the se­lec­tion of more than one pos­si­ble mark.

Af­ter the se­lec­tion of the marks, they were then giv­en to the per­son who was re­spon­si­ble for col­lect­ing the bets, or pot as it was then called, se­lect­ing the win­ning mark and pay­ing out to those who won.

This per­son was known as the banker or Whe Whe banker, who would first record the cho­sen mark on a piece of pa­per which was called a tick­et.

In the 20th cen­tu­ry, this ap­proach was changed as pun­ters were al­lowed to write down the pots them­selves on what was now called lists. These lists al­so record­ed the to­tal amount bet­ted, while us­ing a spe­cial code to iden­ti­fy the bet­ter, to pro­tect him or her against pos­si­ble po­lice ar­rest since the game was il­le­gal.

The se­lec­tion of the mark was sup­posed to be a se­cret process and its se­lec­tion was re­ferred to as the bussing of the mark. This phrase has tak­en on oth­er con­no­ta­tions in our so­ci­ety, which are not re­lat­ed to the game.

The win­ning mark was re­vealed to pun­ters on a roll of pa­per at­tached to a string sus­pend­ed from ei­ther a roof or tree. One of the im­por­tant rules in the se­lec­tion of marks was that a mark which was cho­sen at the first draw, could not be re­played on the sec­ond draw. This was called a dead mark.

In the ear­lies, the odds on bet­ting were 30 cents to one cent but was changed over time to $30 to $1. The size of the odds, how­ev­er, may have var­ied from banker to banker de­pend­ing on how much mon­ey or bank they had.

Bankers were pop­u­lar in com­mu­ni­ties, as they were known to as­sist with ex­pens­es re­lat­ed to sick­ness, fu­ner­als and even the cel­e­bra­tion of Christ­mas.

The game was usu­al­ly played twice per day and sev­en days per week, with the first draw tak­ing place around mid­day and the sec­ond around 4 pm.

It was played at some clan­des­tine lo­ca­tion called a Whe Whe turf, to avoid the po­lice whose raids are in­te­gral to the game’s his­to­ry.

An­oth­er im­por­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic of the ear­ly game was the im­por­tant role played by cer­tain in­di­vid­u­als var­i­ous­ly called touts, trav­el­ling agents, mark­ers and couri­ers.

Serv­ing as in­ter­me­di­aries or mid­dle­men be­tween the pun­ters and the banker, they re­layed bets on be­half of pun­ters, who feared be­ing caught by the po­lice, to the banker, col­lect­ed their win­nings, and even helped them to in­ter­pret dreams or events and se­lect marks.

Touts act­ed as ver­i­ta­ble con­sul­tants and may have pi­o­neered the con­sul­tan­cy busi­ness in this coun­try.

From its be­gin­nings, how­ev­er, the game was con­demned by the so­cial elites of the day, the me­dia and even­tu­al­ly crim­i­nalised through the pas­sage of pro­hib­i­tive leg­is­la­tion in the 19th and 20th cen­turies.

In the ear­ly moral out­rage against the game in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, it was var­i­ous­ly de­scribed as a mon­ster evil and sys­tem­at­ic roguery that was af­fect­ing the in­dus­tri­ous­ness and fam­i­ly life of the low­er class­es in par­tic­u­lar.

The Trinidad Chron­i­cle of Feb­ru­ary 18, 1882, stat­ed, "The abom­inable Whe Whe–a Chi­nese form of gam­bling…is in full op­er­a­tion for many weeks in the Chi­nese quar­ter of Port-of-Spain (we mean Up­per Prince Street), work­ing a se­ri­ous amount of de­mor­al­i­sa­tion amongst a class of peo­ple al­ways open to temp­ta­tion and al­ready deeply sunk in… dan­ger­ous and cor­rupt ways."

How­ev­er, as with cock­fight­ing and oth­er forms of gam­bling, par­tic­i­pa­tion in the game was not re­strict­ed to the low­er class­es and al­so in­clud­ed elite el­e­ments.

The San Fer­nan­do Gazette of Jan­u­ary 22, 1881, re­port­ed, "The evil and se­duc­tive in­flu­ences of this mon­ster trade in gam­bling af­fects all grades of so­ci­ety alike, is suf­fi­cient­ly es­tab­lished by the num­ber of all class­es who, at every hour of the day, throng these de­mor­al­is­ing agen­cies to pur­chase tick­ets."

Much like par­tic­i­pa­tion in Play Whe to­day, there­fore, par­tic­i­pa­tion in Whe Whe was a mul­ti-class phe­nom­e­non.

How­ev­er, de­spite the con­dem­na­tion, the pro­hib­i­tive leg­is­la­tion, the many po­lice raids and ar­rests, the game per­sist­ed de­spite this crack­down.

Fast for­ward to 1994 when Play Whe was in­tro­duced un­der the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board, many felt that it marked the end of the game’s crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and se­cre­cy. How­ev­er, this didn’t prove to be the case.

The State, there­fore, has been guilty of dou­ble­s­peak and dou­ble­think.

While it is okay to take part in Play Whe, it re­mains il­le­gal to take part in Whe Whe, de­spite the for­mer be­ing bor­rowed hook, line and sinker from the lat­ter.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, due to the ab­sence of so­cial re­search, it is im­pos­si­ble to know the ex­tent to which the orig­i­nal game has been im­pact­ed by the state-sanc­tioned Play Whe, al­though grapevine da­ta sug­gests that it still ex­ists.

Be­sides, it is al­so im­pos­si­ble to know how Play Whe has im­pact­ed the so­ci­ety based on re­cent da­ta, al­though it is well known that it pro­vides a sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue stream to both the Gov­ern­ment as well as the agents of the NL­CB through the com­mis­sions they re­ceive.