An official of the National Lottery Authority (NLA), Mr. Andrew Atua, has stated that the operations of illegal lotto operators, popularly known as Banker to Banker, may have annexed as much as 75% of all lottery operations in Ghana.
This may have led to significant loss of revenue for Ghana as a nation.
Mr. Atua, who is the NLA Cordinator for its VAG Operations, was speaking at a program organized by NLA for leading media personnel at the Best Western Beach Hotel at Nungua in Accra.
He noted that the Banker to Banker operators basically pirate off the operations of NLA, by using the draw of NLA, but does their sales through written paper instead of the POS machines used by NLA.
Mr. Atua revealed that since the induction into office of the new Director-General of NLA, Mr. Sammi Awuku, efforts have been made to coerce operators to licence themselves with NLA.
“Covid-19 allowed them to operate in peace for a while and Act 722 was not enforced,” he said.
He said that with the arrival of the new Director-General, they started a process of pre-qualification, out of which about 140 companies applied.
He said that after the close of the date for the submission of forms, about seventy applications were disqualified for various reasons and failing to generally live up to acceptable criteria.
“But even out of this 140 operators who picked up forms, we believe that there are even more out there,” he said.
He said that eventually, the number was sieved down to fourteen companies who were able to go through all the processes including paying the appropriate guarantee, insurance and tax clearance certification.
He said that the statistics so far are indicative of the level of problems the nation is facing with the operations of the Banker to Banker operations.
“Even though the swoops are helping and forcing some of them out, we still have a long way to go,” he said.
He warned that the swoops would go on, and that so far nineteen people have been arrested with more envisaged,” he said.
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