Af­ter more than three years of work­ing to­geth­er on leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late this coun­try’s $16 bil­lion gam­bling in­dus­try, the Op­po­si­tion did not sup­port the bill in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day.

The Gam­bling (Gam­ing and Bet­ting) Con­trol Bill, 2016, was de­feat­ed when all 15 Op­po­si­tion mem­bers ab­stained from vot­ing for it.

Gan­ga Singh and Rudy In­dars­ingh, who were part of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee es­tab­lished to look at the bill, were among those who ab­stained.

The 20 votes from Gov­ern­ment mem­bers present were not enough to pass the bill be­cause it re­quired a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty.

The gam­bling in­dus­try is cur­rent­ly gov­erned by the Gam­bling and Bet­ting Act, Chap 11:19, Act No,22 of 1963.

But leg­is­la­tion tak­en to the Par­lia­ment to treat with reg­u­lat­ing the in­dus­try since 1999 has been un­suc­cess­ful.

In May 2015, then fi­nance min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai pi­lot­ed a bill to reg­u­late the in­dus­try. It was passed unan­i­mous­ly with a vote of 26 for by the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship.

At the time, then op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley was sus­pend­ed from the Par­lia­ment and the op­po­si­tion stayed away in protest. Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, who laud­ed the bill dur­ing that de­bate, was among those who ab­stained yes­ter­day.

The bill was then tak­en to the Sen­ate but lapsed be­cause Par­lia­ment had to be dis­solved for the gen­er­al elec­tion.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert was the first to ex­press his dis­ap­point­ment the bill was not passed yes­ter­day.

“When we came in 2016, what we de­cid­ed to do was to lay the bill word for word and iden­ti­cal form to what had been dealt with by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2015,” Im­bert said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence af­ter the sit­ting.

In or­der to en­sure Op­po­si­tion sup­port, Im­bert said the bill was sent to a JSC.

“We worked with the op­po­si­tion UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress) to ad­dress any con­cerns they might have had with re­spect to the leg­is­la­tion,” Im­bert said.

“We spent three years work­ing with them, ses­sion af­ter ses­sion af­ter ses­sion, dis­cus­sion af­ter dis­cus­sion, hours and hours of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, we in­ter­ro­gat­ed and in­ter­viewed and sought feed­back from every stake­hold­er in the in­dus­try.”

He said when the JSC’s work was com­plet­ed there were no com­plaints from the op­po­si­tion, yet they chose not to sup­port the bill yes­ter­day.

“They had ab­solute­ly no good rea­son to ab­stain,” he said

He ques­tioned whether the Op­po­si­tion had been lob­bied by peo­ple from the gam­bling in­dus­try. Im­bert said the un­reg­u­lat­ed in­dus­try means tax­pay­ers lose $500 mil­lion in rev­enue a year. The T&T gam­bling in­dus­try em­ploys 7,000 peo­ple and its lack of reg­u­la­tion means these work­ers can­not be prop­er­ly pro­tect­ed, he said

“It is re­port­ed that there are over 200 pri­vate mem­bers’ clubs op­er­at­ing in T&T and that over 20,000 amuse­ment gam­ing ma­chines may be found at mem­bers’ clubs, restau­rants and bars through­out the coun­try,” the JSC re­port pro­duced last No­vem­ber states.

“Pri­ma­ry among these chal­lenges has been T&T’s fail­ure to meet its in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions with re­spect to mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing. The dereg­u­lat­ed en­vi­ron­ment cre­ates aper­tures for the use of le­git­i­mate­ly reg­is­tered busi­ness­es, such as gam­ing es­tab­lish­ment and mem­bers’ clubs, to en­gage in mon­ey laun­der­ing and ter­ror­ist fi­nanc­ing. More­over, very few gam­ing es­tab­lish­ments pay the re­quired tax­es.”

Im­bert said the bill sought to cre­ate a Gam­bling (Gam­ing and bet­ting) Con­trol Com­mis­sion which would reg­u­late the in­dus­try and pro­vide over­sight to the gam­ing sec­tor.

“The com­mis­sion would be re­spon­si­ble for in­sti­tut­ing a li­cens­ing regime which would make it dif­fi­cult for crim­i­nals and their as­so­ciates to own, man­age or con­trol gam­ing es­tab­lish­ments,” the re­port said of this pro­posed body.

Im­bert said T&T re­mains the on­ly coun­try with an un­reg­u­lat­ed casi­no in­dus­try. As such, the state will now have to look at try­ing to change cur­rent leg­is­la­tion to help mon­i­tor the in­dus­try. But those changes would not be as strin­gent as if the Gam­bling (Gam­ing and Bet­ting Con­trol) Bill 2016 were passed, he said.

Pri­or to the vote, in con­clud­ing de­bate Im­bert queried why the Op­po­si­tion had con­sis­tent­ly re­fused to sup­port law to reg­u­late the sec­tor. He said Gov­ern­ment was aware there were peo­ple in the lo­cal casi­no/gam­ing sec­tor who are in­volved in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties. He al­so said casi­nos in T&T are owned by for­eign­ers who ex­port earn­ings with US dol­lars via the black mar­ket.

Im­bert said the Fi­nan­cial Ac­tion Task Force had al­so cit­ed the casi­no sec­tor as a clear source of mon­ey-laun­der­ing.