In almost all countries around the world, you don’t normally need people that live there to make the governments look like a bunch of idiots – they’ll do it themselves seemingly without even trying, however, the Filipino government seemed to think it was all going rather swimmingly as regarding unregulated gambling in the country. Like many of their Asian counterparts they’d made a number of arrests to send the message out that they’d not be accepting it, especially the ever popular Gueteng.
To do this the government made sure that they limited the amount of companies who could offer gambling in the country, but news coming out of the Pacific Islands seems to suggest they missed something.
Not usually an oracle of things bad, but obviously a bit of a demon in the confession box, a retired archbishop, namely Oscar Cruz, earlier this week testified before the Philippines House of Representatives telling them that he knew of at least seven small town lottery operators who had misreported gross sales to the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), saying: “The PCSO has been duped to the high heavens, so to speak.”
Had to slip in that lord almighty reference, didn’t he!
Cruz then went on to cite two separate examples of operators declaring only 25% to 50% of their earnings to the PCSO, thereby depriving the group of around $5.68million in the first half of 2010. Maybe if the Filipinos had gone about it differently and licensed small town operators they may well be sitting in a prettier position right now.