Asha Javeed

Con­tribut­ing Writer

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Johnnie Abra­ham, head of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) and Field Of­fice, is among 11 mem­bers ap­point­ed to the Gam­bling Con­trol Com­mis­sion.

Abra­ham re­tired from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in De­cem­ber 2015 af­ter spend­ing a long span of his ca­reer in the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion.

The Com­mis­sion’s chair­man is Dr Stephen Bha­gan.

While their ap­point­ment was made on Oc­to­ber 16 for a three-year pe­ri­od, the names were on­ly gazetted yes­ter­day.

The rest of the board in­cludes Abra­ham, Vi­o­la So­nia Gar­cia, Brent Marchan, Sunil Moon­sam­my, Ter­rance Ram­per­sad, Sa­lome Ram­di­al, Avinash Sura­j­nath, Savi­ta Ma­haraj, Ek­ka Natasha Mc Fee and An­dre Ger­ad Se­bro.

The Com­mis­sion has been with­out a full board for 18 months, with on­ly Asa Archie stay­ing on for the du­ra­tion of her term, which ex­pired on Oc­to­ber 10.

On Oc­to­ber 24, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo told Guardian Me­dia that the board’s ap­point­ment was im­mi­nent af­ter his Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary had to step in to re­solve the Com­mis­sion’s fi­nance is­sues for the month of Sep­tem­ber. The con­tract of for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive Jew­el-Ann Tro­ja had ex­pired on Sep­tem­ber 13 and was not re­newed, which forced the Com­mis­sion to seek the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s ad­vice on sig­na­to­ries for all fi­nance-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

But up to yes­ter­day, the Com­mis­sion did not post the iden­ti­ties of the mem­bers on its web­site.

The Com­mis­sion, which is a statu­to­ry body, was cap­i­talised in 2023 with Stephen Tang Nian as chair­man and Ste­van Thomas as deputy chair­man, with op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion ex­pect­ed to be done through a phased im­ple­men­ta­tion process.

From the bud­get doc­u­ments, be­tween fis­cal years 2023 and 2027, the Com­mis­sion re­ceived a com­bined to­tal of $93,556,099 in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture al­lo­ca­tions un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance. The al­lo­ca­tion moved from $4.92 mil­lion in 2023 to an es­ti­mat­ed $30 mil­lion for fis­cal 2027.

The full Gam­bling (Gam­ing and Bet­ting) Con­trol Act- specif­i­cal­ly those gov­ern­ing the li­cens­ing, reg­u­la­tion, com­pli­ance, and en­force­ment of gam­bling ac­tiv­i­ties- has not yet been pro­claimed.

How­ev­er, last month, the Gov­ern­ment moved to raise the gam­bling age to 25 and reg­u­late on­line gam­ing.

Tan­coo, dur­ing a de­bate in Par­lia­ment to amend the leg­is­la­tion, had ar­gued that pro­hibit­ing re­mote gam­bling risks dri­ving the mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try un­der­ground. He stat­ed the Gov­ern­ment was mov­ing to­wards li­cens­ing and reg­u­lat­ing re­mote gam­bling rather than re­ly­ing on pro­hi­bi­tion, ar­gu­ing that an un­der­ground in­dus­try cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for tax eva­sion and oth­er il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Tan­coo said that there are cur­rent­ly 1,150 reg­is­tered gam­ing-re­lat­ed ac­counts with the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR)—926 Gam­ing Amuse­ment Tax ac­counts and 224 Club Gam­ing Tax ac­counts.

He said that gam­ing tax pay­ments in 2025 amount­ed to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $72.66 mil­lion, com­pris­ing $15.06 mil­lion in Gam­ing Amuse­ment Tax and $57.60 mil­lion in Club Gam­ing Tax. As for 2026, so far, ap­prox­i­mate­ly $71.32 mil­lion has been col­lect­ed—$21.23 mil­lion in Gam­ing Amuse­ment Tax and $50.10 mil­lion in Club Gam­ing Tax.