Pokie fraud: ODT fails to notice own backyard

● The Trusts Charitable Foundation (TTCF Inc) ● The Trusts Community Foundation Ltd (TTCF Ltd) ● Otago Rugby Football Union (ORFU) ● Professional Rugby ● Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport ● Harness Racing ● Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) ● Gambling Commission ● Pokies ● Rorts ● Organised Crime ● Serious Fraud ● Political Interference

The newspaper had better start naming names.

### ODT Online Sat, 28 Jul 2012
Editorial: Poker machine proceeds
Hundreds of millions of coins rattle through poker machines in New Zealand pubs each year. A proportion of those coins pour back out of the pokies to be scooped up by punters delighted to receive an instant return on a risky investment. The rest tumble into the Government’s tax coffers and the vaults of gaming trusts which then get to decide how they are distributed.

It is no wonder that, when some industry figures allege endemic noncompliance and outright corruption in the pokie business, many are willing to listen. And while such sweeping statements inevitably tarnish honest operators, there has long been, at the very least, the whiff of questionable decision-making involving some trusts.

In the South, one trust had its licence suspended for five days after spending money on venue fit-outs for high-returning sites. In other cases, legislative roadblocks appear to have been simply driven around. There have been examples in the past of organisations that, having failed to set up their own pokie trust, have entered a relationship with an existing trust and got money that way.

Hearings on Mr Flavell’s Gambling (Gambling Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill are slated to begin next month. Lawmakers will face strident views from camps on both sides. They clearly have some serious thinking to do.
Read more

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Related Posts:
25.7.12 Martin Legge backgrounds TTCF (pokie trust) and Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts #DIA
24.7.12 Mention in NZ Herald dispatches: TTCF and friends ORFU [David Fisher]
15.7.12 Martin Legge responds to media stories on Murray Acklin, TTCF and DIA
13.7.12 We know exactly where ORFU has been. It’s locked there. It’s not over.
26.6.12 Department of Internal Affairs, ORFU, Centre of Excellence for Amateur Sport, and TTCF [Russell Garbutt]
22.6.12 Connections: ORFU and local harness racing [Martin Legge]
20.6.12 Mayor Cull leaves the planet [Russell Garbutt]
4.6.12 Questions: ORFU and the Centre for Excellence in Amateur Sport [Russell Garbutt]
26.5.12 DIA media release
22.5.12 Join ORFU board, without forensic audit to show how millions went west?
29.4.12 Department of Internal Affairs, the gambling authority
22.4.12 DIA, OAG, TTCF and Otago Rugby swim below the line [Martin Legge / Steve Kilgallon]

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Media Links:
14.7.12 NZ Herald Watchdog: Pokie checks not up to mark
25.6.12 Sunday Star Times Richard Boock (Sunday Star Times 24/6/12) on pokie funding of sport
20.6.12 D Scene – ORFU $480k debt deal stays #bookmark Register
2.6.12 ODT Determined to clean up sector
2.6.12 ODT Internal affairs to investigate ORFU, pokies
2.6.12 ODT MP’s query sees ‘all hell’ break loose
29.5.12 ODT Rugby: Financial troubleshooter warns job not over
23.5.12 ODT Grants meant for amateur rugby used to pay ORFU creditors
3.5.12 Sunday Star Times/Stuff Stadium plans met with scorn [‘Stadium builds under fire – sport’]
3.5.12 ODT Dinner profits went on day-to-day costs
1.5.12 ODT Small creditors get their money back from ORFU
23.4.12 The Standard Gaming industry whistleblower
22.4.12 Sunday Star Times/Stuff The inside man

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Martin Legge backgrounds TTCF (pokie trust) and Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts #DIA

Comment received.
Gaming industry whistleblower Martin Legge backgrounds comments in David Fisher’s article ‘MP keeps heat on pokie trusts‘ (NZ Herald 24.7.12).

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Martin Legge
Submitted on 2012/07/25 at 10:33 am

The full article has TTCF Chairman, Ross Clow claiming the new TTCF structure has reduced costs. What he has failed to tell readers is that the former structure returned in excess of 50% to the community for many years. That was in the time before TTCF began paying $600k per annum to a private company (TTCF West Auckland Ltd), a company purposely set up by the Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts, and of which Mr Clow and Warren Flaunty were Directors.

Portage and Waitakere Licensing Trusts are TTCF’s biggest and most powerful pub operators and despite already receiving $$millions per annum for hosting TTCF pokie machines at those bars, they demanded more from TTCF. This company was simply a means by which the licensing trusts transferred a large proportion of its own commercial staff and office costs off the balance sheet of their liquor business on to the balance sheet of a pokie trust (TTCF) who would use community funds to make the payments. It made the bottom line of a liquor business look better than it was.

In 2006 DIA warned TTCF against the costs but TTCF went ahead and did it anyway. After waiting 2.5 years before acting, DIA launched a 6 month long investigation into TTCF and the outcome was that just as they had warned, the costs associated with the Company were not actual, reasonable or necessary, and simply a duplication of services and a means to mislead the West Auckland Community into believing the grants were all coming from the licensing trusts.
Read more

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The Trusts Community (previously Charitable) Foundation “…faced questions over payments to the Otago Rugby Football Union. Lawyers at the sport’s central body, the NZ Rugby Union, handed over material to the DIA of information found while carrying out its recent financial rescue.”
-David Fisher, 24 July

Related Post:
24.7.12 Mention in NZ Herald dispatches: TTCF and friends ORFU

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr