The National Lottery Authority (NLA) says it is losing almost the same amount that it generates annually to the activities of illegal lotto operators in the country. The authority is, thus, confident its annual turnover will rise significantly should the Lotto Courts, put in place by the NLA to prosecute illegal lotto operators, commence work. “If we start prosecuting those boys (the illegal operators) and it begins to deter others from engaging in the practice, then it will reflect in our sales,” a board member of the authority, Mr Kojo Graham, said in an interview. NLA, the body that oversees lotto operations and gaming in the country, made about GHC240 million in revenues last year and is now targeting about GHC315 million this year, said Mr Graham. “If the banker-to-banker operators and other illegal operators weren’t there, then we could have made higher than that last year,” he said, adding that the authority believed it was losing “just about probably the same amount that we are earning.” Mr Graham spoke to the Daily Graphic after the authority held a press conference to react to media reports that it had lost billions of cedis to a recent fraud that rocked it. The authority reportedly lost some revenues to fraudsters, one of whom was a database administrator at the NLA. “Those fraudsters altered the serial numbers of lotto tickets in the platform used to choose winning numbers and subsequently matched them with non-winning ones”, the Board Chairman of NLA, Dr Scali Agodzo, explained at the press briefing. The chairman, however, added that the amount reported in the media was “grossly exaggerated.” “It is not correct that the institution lost billions of Ghana cedis, especially since the annual turnover of the NLA is yet to hit the billion mark,” he added. “The authority has since referred the matter to the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) and the Economic and Organised Crime Officer (EOCO) and the two institutions have commenced investigations into the matter”, Dr Agodzo said. He explained that the present board and management had tightened internal controls at the NLA after taking over in 2009 to help reduce fraud and fight revenue losses to the authority. “The high win ratio we used to experience which was partly influenced by fraud has fallen from an average of 56 per cent of sales revenue and is now averaging 47 per cent in the first quarter of 2013,” he noted. He also assured that the authority would continue to implement programmes aimed at securing its operations and further warned illegal lotto operators to desist from such acts or face the law. The NLA has, meanwhile, secured an Executive Instrument mandating it to prosecute persons and institutions whose actions contravene the National Lotto Act, 2006, (Act 722). The act also empowers the authority to set up Lotto Courts that will specifically prosecutor illegal operators.