The UK Gambling Commission is being criticized for appropriating £ 154.8 million from the National Lottery charity fund. According to a report in the Mail on Sunday, the sum is “£ 50 million more than budgeted and money that should have been used to support cash organizations and community groups hungry for cash”.
Andrew Rhodes, CEO of UKGC, said the payment would be used to regulate the lottery for the next 10 years, as well as to pay for the recent bidding process that saw a Czech billionaire take over the contract. Camelot, who kept him for almost three decades. .
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for gambling-related damage and former Conservative Party leader, was critical of the takeover and said: “This is another example of the way The proportion of funds earmarked for good causes has plummeted. ”
Andrew Rhodes told the Public Accounts Committee of the Commons that the £ 154.8 million budget unexpectedly rose to over £ 50 million above the initial £ 102.9 million figure, but did not no details of why.
He also tried to alleviate the fuss by pointing out that while £ 50 million is a huge sum, it only represents a 0.7% increase in the charity budget of £ 14.5 billion.
Legal action
While the public criticism detailed above is not embarrassing enough, the UKGC is also facing legal action for its recent management of the licensing process.
Allwyn Entertainment, the largest lottery operator in Europe, owned by Czech billionaire Karel Komarek, fought the contract with Camelot under a modified bidding scoring system that is likely to form the basis of legal action.
The Czech billionaire, valued at $ 7.8 billion, also co-owns a gas storage facility with the Russian government entity Gazprom, which is further complicated by the current geopolitical climate. that Komarek has publicly denounced Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
