A troubling report on State-Owned Enterprises obtained by ANN has placed the National Lotteries Authority under intense scrutiny, with allegations that programmes were created and operated outside the normal rules of accountability under the previous ULP administration. According to the report, the NLA’s Special Project Unit was established by political directives, operated without board oversight, and lacked proper management supervision. The report further alleges that the unit was typically activated during election years. It also points to NLA borrowing monies from the National Insurance Services during an election period, while persons were reportedly paid substantial sums to “manage” those borrowed funds.
The report alleges that selected students received financial benefits totaling $3.7 million, but that those beneficiaries were handpicked by the political directorate. Most strikingly, the report says the criteria used to select those students were unknown to the Board and unknown to management.
That finding alone raises serious questions about transparency and fairness, and whether public funds were being funneled through what was presented as student welfare but may instead have served as an election-season tool to influence households and buy political support for the ULP.
If borne out, the report would point to more than simple administrative weakness. It would suggest a pattern in which political control may have overridden governance inside a state institution funded by the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The questions are now sharp and unavoidable: who authorized this arrangement, why was the Board kept in the dark, and was an election-year operation being run with taxpayers’ money outside proper scrutiny? ANN understands that the current NDP government intends to release more information arising from this initial audit, with further investigations expected to follow.