Lotteries are an enjoyable pastime among people of all ages, yet gambling can have serious repercussions. In Laos, lottery officials have been accused of gaming the system to avoid making large payouts – prompting people to switch from legal state lotteries to informal football lotteries or chances purchased through short messaging service (SMS) instead.
According to reports from one source, this issue was highlighted by a recent report showing how a lottery official paid an individual to provide false testimony to investigators – later found guilty and given five year prison sentence in October. As a result of the scandal, the government issued a directive to the Ministry of Finance, which oversees the state lottery system, instructing it to collaborate with Public Security for better management of this matter. This directive also requested reducing state lottery drawings from two per week to just one per week and more transparent notification of winners. Furthermore, informal football lotteries and SMS lottery chances purchased were banned due to them allegedly encouraging people to become addicted to gambling.
Lottery officials have also been accused of manipulating results to limit large payouts by changing winning numbers or eliminating numbers deemed unlucky, such as 509 in October’s Sibsonglasy Lottery drawing; it only appeared as 5 on tickets sold on that day according to sources at RFA’s Lao Service. Furthermore, number 662 did not appear randomly among tickets sold during that day due to its association with buffaloes which are symbols of good fortune.
One winner who won 1.2 billion kip in the Sibsonglasy Lottery revealed she plans on using her prize money to expand her business and buy gold for his wife, while another with 6.2 billion kip pledged some of it toward helping orphans in her hometown and other parts of the country. Both winners expressed surprise they could win such large prizes!
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