According to a latest report issued by the National Audit Office, the National Lottery Board has spent nearly 400 million rupees in the last seven years alone to run the National Lottery Board in rented buildings. Sri Lanka Latest News
It shows that the construction of a new building for the National Lottery Board and the expenditure of more than four crore rupees for obtaining advisory services was approved, but the said building was not constructed.
Meanwhile, the National Audit Office claims that the board had acquired an illegal building on rental basis and paid nearly two crore rupees as rent from May 2020 to April 2022.
The audit report shows that the actual nature of the building was not informed while obtaining the approval of the Council of Ministers for this building.
Meanwhile, it states that about two crore seventy lakh rupees have been spent from the year 2016 to the year 2021 to obtain advisory services for the construction of the board’s business premises.
Stating that more than 63 lakhs worth of goods purchased by the board for sales promotion and publicity activities, the audit office stated that 53 gold articles including gold coins and necklaces worth nearly 18 lakh rupees which had been bought as lottery gifts were kept in safes without being used for those activities.
Meanwhile, the report states that out of the thirty thousand dollar fortune lottery tickets printed by the board in 2016, 569 lottery tickets were misplaced and no formal investigation was conducted regarding the misplacement of the lottery tickets and no action was taken to collect damages from the relevant parties.
The audit office said that this lottery was supposed to be drawn in 2016, but it had not happened by April 30 last year.
This information is mentioned in the audit report included in the 2021 annual report of the National Lottery Board.
