Gail Alexan­der

The act­ing di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB) has gone on two weeks’ leave to al­low the Fi­nance Min­istry’s Cen­tral Au­dit unit to probe trans­ac­tions and pay­ments in­volv­ing Lot­to agents at­tached to the NL­CB.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed this yes­ter­day in Par­lia­ment in re­sponse to ques­tions from the Op­po­si­tion. But he gave no de­tails.

How­ev­er yes­ter­day UNC ac­tivist De­vant Ma­haraj, via a state­ment, called for the Fi­nance Min­istry to probe the sit­u­a­tion re­gard­ing cer­tain Lot­to agents and al­leged ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ing monies owed to NL­CB.

Ma­haraj claimed NL­CB’s Board had re­ceived a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter from a Lot­to agent on is­sues and NL­CB’s Board on Mon­day had de­cid­ed to ex­am­ine the sit­u­a­tion.

Re­spond­ing to oth­er Op­po­si­tion queries on the pro­vi­sion of state lands for for­mer Petrotrin work­ers, Row­ley said this re­quired iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and prepa­ra­tion of lands in­clud­ing rel­e­vant ap­provals and in­fra­struc­ture. Once this is fin­ished, he said, spots would be avail­able.

“It’s not an overnight thing,” he said, adding that a team-com­pris­ing HDC and oth­er of­fi­cials were work­ing on the is­sue.

Ques­tioned on the fur­ther dis­tri­b­u­tion of lands for for­mer Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed work­ers, Row­ley said 4,274 were com­plet­ed and 230 leas­es were to be done once peo­ple were iden­ti­fied and found. Four­teen sites are in­volved in lit­i­ga­tion and probes.

He said by Gov­ern­ment was aim­ing to en­sure that 355 of those leas­es would be dis­trib­uted by the be­gin­ning of 2020 and by May 2020 a fur­ther 900 leas­es would be giv­en out. Af­ter that 2,271 sites would be avail­able.

Row­ley al­so said Cab­i­net was told on Thurs­day that lawyers are fi­nal­is­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions for the new op­er­a­tor of the Mag­dale­na Grand ho­tel.

One doc­u­ment is be­ing fi­nalised and on com­ple­tion of that “in the very near fu­ture, this month—in the next few days” Gov­ern­ment ex­pect­ed the op­er­a­tor, Ap­ple Leisure would be in a “po­si­tion to ex­e­cute.”

On the ques­tion of com­pen­sa­tion for the team which in­ves­ti­gat­ed the Dar­ryl Smith mat­ter, Row­ley de­nied that the Jacque­line Wil­son team which ex­am­ined al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct at the Sports Min­istry re­ceived any com­pen­sa­tion.