up to $28 million that should have been available for community grants<\/a> has been used to cover other expenses instead.<\/p>\nPub Charity chief executive Martin Cheer said some trusts may have misunderstood the rules, but ignorance of the law was no excuse.<\/p>\n
“There’s an element of hand in glove really; the industry is regulated and we need guidance from the regulator.<\/p>\n
“But also these are sovereign entities with governance structures and management. They should have done better.”<\/p>\n
Cheer said the trusts were working to rectify the situation, with $11.5 million recovered so far.<\/p>\n
Gaming Machine Association chair Peter Dengate Thrush told RNZ that while mistakes were made in the accounts, it looked worse than it was because of the review’s timeframe.<\/p>\n
“If the total figure that the department is now saying needs accounting for is $28m, while that’s a lot of money, spread out over the 10 years that the department has now gone back … it’s only a very small proportion of the total flow.”<\/p>\n
He said it was the regulator’s job to keep the industry clean.<\/p>\n
Most trusts tried to comply with the rules, work closely with officials and operate transparently, he said.<\/p>\n
Millions of dollars spent by pokie orgs, instead of grants<\/p>\n
However, he believed there should be consequences for any trusts that did engage in creative accounting.<\/p>\n
“There will be some societies who are in deep trouble, for which this is not just an accounting readjustment.<\/p>\n
“The department occasionally finds some people breaking the law. If there are any at that end of the scale, then they should be prosecuted,” he told RNZ.<\/p>\n
On Friday, DIA director of gambling Vicki Scott said about three-quarters of the 32 trusts were non-compliant with the rules to some degree.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been investigating for two to three years now.<\/p>\n
“Many were essentially prioritising their own growth and their own competitive advantage over the interests of the community.<\/p>\n
“They were spending beyond their means on things like gaming machines.”<\/p>\n
She believed about $20m could be recovered. Repayment plans have been devised with some trusts.<\/p>\n
“Our role isn’t to put a significant section of the industry out of business but we are really firm that the money needs to be back in the community’s hands in a reasonable period of time.”<\/p>\n
About $1 billion is generated by pokie machines in New Zealand every year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A pokie trust believes mistakes and a lack of clear guidance from regulators led to millions of dollars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598292,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-598291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}