PM Briceño Accuses Brads Gaming Company of Breach of Contract

Prime Minister John Briceño says Brads Gaming Company has operated for the past ten years without submitting a report to the Lotteries Committee. Brads Gaming Company is required, through its contractual agreement with the Government of Belize, to submit these annual reports. Since taking office, the Briceño Administration has written to the company twice, six months ago and only recently, on December twenty-third, 2022, requesting that they comply with the terms of the contract. But according to him, Brads Gaming Company is yet to respond. The Prime Minister shared more details.

Prime Minister John Briceño

Prime Minister John Briceño

“Well first of all we have to give the Brads Gaming Company an opportunity to answer and it depends on their response that is what we are going to make a decision. But, we know for instance the first ten years that Brads had the license, not one single year did they make any kind of financial reporting to the Boledo Commission or the Ministry of Finance. The Minister of Finance then was the Prime Minister, then Dean Barrow and not one time did they have any kind of reporting. So, once we came in and started to settle in and take a look at all of these things we wrote them a letter in the middle of last year telling them you are not complying to the agreement. So, we gave them an opportunity to be able to comply and here we are more than six months later, they never did. So, we were forced to write a letter to say you are not complying with these and then giving them an opportunity to come to meet with the Lotteries Commission to point  out what they are doing to comply. It is not a matter that they have anything outstanding. It is a good deal you know. They sell the boledo, collect the boledo, and after they done collect the boledo at the end of the quarter they pay fees for that quarter. Then, they collect the money for the second quarter. After they collect money then they pay the government. You couldn’t get a better deal and sometimes you have to ask why it that Prime Minister Barrow allowed something like that is. But, that is for another day. So it is not a matter of anything outstanding. It is just that they are not complying with the conditions of the license. The other thing is that there is no system where we can know what is their sales. They gave a number that I feel is grossly I believe underestimated. So, we need to get to the bottom. There are so many things that have been going wrong with that agreement.”