Prosecutors block the Romanian Lottery accounts! Fraud of over EUR 100m

The prosecutors have blocked the Romanian Lottery accounts, for making money from electronic “slot machine” devices, known as “pacanele”, without having a license. The damage exceeds EUR 100 million, according to Ziare.com.
In file involves three companies with Greek shareholders: LOTROM, Intracom and Intralot, and the investigators want to recover from them and from the Romanian Lottery EUR 130 million for illegally collected revenues after 2009, when an emergency ordinance changed the regulations on the gambling market.
“Right after the coming into force of this regulation, the lottery has the obligation to request an yearly authorization Lottery for each machine (RON 8,000 /year) and for gambling licensing (RON 25,000 /year)”, prosecutors say, quoted by the Rise Project.
Anti-fraud police have started the investigation in this case in 2010, this year the investigation has been taken over by the prosecutors upon the Bucharest Court of Appeals. It seems that in 2003 the Romanian Lottery and three private companies have entered into a secret agreement with the electronics “slot machine” devices.
More specifically, the lottery bought 6,263 of electronic devices from LOTROM according to a contract financed by the other two companies in the Greek group, following that the money was returned in revenues. But according to the concluded trade agreement, devices were recorded for another game – “video-lottery” – which is taxed differently.
The prosecutors say that, according to undisclosed terms, the Romanian Lottery did, in fact, other gaming business than those for which it has a license. This was a source of additional revenues and of damages to the state budget.

Court of AppealsdamagegamblingLOTROMprosecutorsRomanian lotteryslot machine
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