00:00The NLCB board and management says they remain committed to fulfilling their
00:04fiduciary duties and will take all necessary steps to ensure that any
00:09payments made to the lotteries board will be collected. Regarding the
00:14incapacity of certain agents to transmit funds on schedule, NLCB chairman Eustace
00:20Nancis stated, quote, it is important to recognize that these funds that are
00:25collected by our agents are being collected on behalf of the NLCB and the
00:31monies are in fact the property of the NLCB. Failure by any agent to remit any
00:36such funds to the NLCB on time and in full with the intent to permanently
00:41deprive the NLCB of the funds is an ineffect tantamount to unjust
00:47enrichment, end quote. Badeen Possad, the president of the Online Gaming
00:51Association of Trinidad and Tobago, gave his statement regarding the issue.
00:56We want to make it abundantly clear that we have no problem with NLCB trying to recover
01:02indebtedness. We have repeatedly said so. We are simply offering a different
01:08approach to recover that indebtedness. That's all. He says he would not like the
01:13NLCB to personalize these issues and to leave the terminal operational while
01:18arrangements are made for a payment plan with the agents. He also remarks
01:23that the NLCB is being too heavy-handed with this issue.
01:26They're being very, very heavy-handed because 36 agents out of 12,000 agents, by his own admission and his own figures, I mean you being
01:40high-handed with now 11,164 agents and he's saying that the headline on the
01:46release is that, I'm just paraphrasing here from what I remember, because of these delinquent agents, they haven't implemented these policies.
01:55After several failed negotiations, the NLCB issued pre-action protocol letters
02:01to delinquent agents last month. It said this was a final resort in its
02:06continued efforts to recover approximately $6 million in unpaid charges.
02:11Azaria Ifill, TV6 News.
