CREATIVE ACCOUNTING

The hot topic this week is Boledo. Belizeans wonder how the changes and revocation of the Brads’ exclusive lottery license affect them and if it is relevant to their daily lives. First, there is a great need to point out that there were as many as ten serious material breaches in the agreement and, therefore, overwhelming reasons to revoke the exclusive license it held. The matter has many layers and provokes as much grief and tears as peeling onions. There are many unanswered questions as to the real shareholders and ultimate owners of this enterprise and rumour has it that they were very well connected to the last administration. The ten-year contract was swiftly renewed mere months from the last general election, despite the fact that basic requirements such as audited financi als were never filed.

Financial audits were only submitted when the current administration insisted the requirements be met. It is interesting to note that Brads claims that during the first ten-year contract they lost money every single year. Despite the losses they claim to have had for ten years they reapplied to continue subsidising lottery games in Belize. According to their calculations, it was only until 2021 that they started to turn a profit. Then it was through some highly creative accounting or fabulous ‘magicmathics’ that they managed to increase their sales by 150% the following year. If one believed in such things as coincidences, one would understand the deeper meaning of the declarations of the legal counsel of Brads, the former Prime Minister Dean Barrow, when he said that the end game is not to regain the license but for the contract to be paid off.

Mr. Barrow, of déluge fame, has been taking a page from his endless playbook of litigation and has been setting up the best possible scenario for Brads. In fact, there has been a change in the ownership of Brads and now a company incorporated in Turks and Caicos has bought shares. This is not happenstance, but a move to ensure and invoke the United Kingdom Investment treaty with Belize. He has been setting this up since it became apparent that it was impossible for Brads to fulfil the conditions set out to keep the license.

Lotteries are usually a way to ensure that monies pooled and collected are returned to those communities where it is most needed in the form of better infrastructure, education, health, and social safety nets. Lotteries are the people’s money and the money is to be returned to the people, and especially the people that most need it. The former Prime Minister and father to the current Leader of the Opposition will now attempt to take the people’s money through litigation and it is exactly why after claiming to have lost money for over a decade they renewed a contract and then suddenly recorded profits to now go back and sue the government for profits that they say they will not enjoy. These games are not played by honourable people, and they put evidence that it was always about the money and never about the people.