In addition to the legal state lottery, which is overseen by the ministry of finance, private business interests have a major stake in the country’s gambling industry. The owners of these companies are often members of the ruling elite, and the business interests themselves have been linked to government corruption in the past. The government must take back control of the national lottery and make it more transparent, a caller from Laos told RFA’s Lao service.
Lottery tickets are sold at local stores across Saigon for 9 000 VN-Dong (40 US-Cents). Individual sellers then strive around the streets of the city trying to sell their tickets until they expire. A ticket seller can make about 200 tickets a day. The individual seller gets about 10% of the ticket sales. This informal lottery and other similar sports lotteries and lottery chances purchased through mobile phone short messaging services, have been the source of controversies.
There are four nationwide lotteries in Canada: Atlantic Lottery Corporation (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador), Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (Ontario), Manitoba Liquor and Lottery Authority and Western Canada Lottery Corporation (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut). The Canadian federal Liberal government has sponsored a bill – the Omnibus Bill – that aims to update many obsolete laws.
A number of countries have a national lottery, including the United States, where lotteries are regulated by the state. Other nations have provincial or territorial lotteries, such as the Quebec Lottery in Canada. The Quebec Lottery drew controversy in 1967 when mayor Jean Drapeau, seeking to recover the money spent on Montreal’s World’s Fair and subway system, announced a “voluntary tax.” The resulting dispute was resolved by the Quebec Court of Appeal in 1968, which ruled that this “tax” did not violate a federal law against lotteries.
In the communist nation of Laos, meanwhile, lottery officials have been accused of rigging the game in order to avoid large pay-outs. The winning numbers on the country’s national lottery – which takes place three times a week – often disappear from purchased tickets before being revealed during the drawing. In a notorious incident on Oct. 14 this year, the number 509 – which is associated with the buffalo as a symbol of good fortune – disappeared from tickets sold throughout the day of the drawing. The number reappeared in the winning list only an hour before the drawing. This incident led to public outrage. The number was later reverted to the number 5.