Monrovia-Sources within the Liberia National Lottery Authority (NLA) told this paper late Sunday that its Director General, Mr. Reginald K. Nagbe is allegedly involved into activities which may affect the entity if measures are put into place.
Mr. Nage has a tenured position which is expected to endbefore August this year, 2025. One of the areas of concern is some vehicles which he allegedly took, cannot be accounted. Some staff members who asked for the vehicle recently, did not get any positive redress from him.
Not only that, but also, various accounts have been allegedly depleted on a weekly basis, a situation which has led to some employees and other industry members calling for some strong mechanism to be put into place before it goes bankrupt.
The National Lottery Authority (NLA) was established by an Act of the Legislature on March 6, 2015. It was created to regulate all games of chance within the country and generate revenue for social development programs.
Not only that, but also to generate revenue for the government and support social development initiatives, including funding education for disabled students.
“Huge cash is being allegedly taken from some of the accounts. But you know this man has about a month or less to be here. So, you should know what I am talking about,” an insider who prefers not to be named said.
The NLA oversees all gambling activities in the country. But over the past time, it has been reported in the media that some dubious transactions have been taking place.
It can be recalled that a local paper reported last year that anonymous source within the National Lottery Authority (NLA) of Liberia leaked documents showed only weeks before the inauguration of His Excellency President Joseph N. Boakai, a letter of intent was sent to NLA requesting a casino license and an alleged quick process of approval commenced.
It further reported that Director Nagbe realizing his time of uncertainty, allegedly began the process to issue a casino license to Platinum Entertainment Incorporated (now located in Congo Town) just prior to the change of Administration.
That on January 11th, 2024, Ms. Vivian Tan of Platinum Entertainment sent a letter of intent to Mr. Nagbe expressing interest in obtaining a license stating that Platinum Entertainment “has the necessary experience and expertise” needed, unfortunately Platinum Entertainment did not legally exist in the Republic of Liberia until its filing date on January 18th 2024.
Due to the seriousness of the allegations, this paper called Director Nage for verification, but his phone was off. It was followed by a text message, but no response.
Perhaps this was one of the reasons the Financial Intelligence Agency in its bid to promote a culture of compliance carried out some work with the NLA.
It was done ahead of a series of inspections of reporting entities, and NLA agreed to strengthen inter-agency coordination and collaboration through knowledge and information sharing, and enforcement of compliance to Liberia’s AML/CFT legal and regulatory frameworks sometime last year.
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