court gavel (Photo: Pixabay.com)
The Republika Srpska Constitutional Court has ruled that the government violated the Constitution by aiding a foreign betting lobby in choosing a partner for a joint venture company.
After that, the Banjaluka District Court annulled the disputed selection procedure and ordered a new one, the Capital website has reported.
Lutrija Republika Srpske and the Casinos Austria VLT company from Switzerland created a joint venture called Elektronska Video Lutrija for the purpose of taking over the domestic lottery market, which is worth tens of millions of marka.
However, as it was recently established that the government interfered and overstepped its powers, by defining the criteria that enabled the Swiss company to be picked as a partner later on.
Capital said that according to the government’s definition of the selection criteria, by which it exceeded its authority, Lutrija’s future associate was supposed to find someone with ten years or more years of experience in organizing lotteries, someone who is a member of the European lottery organization and someone with an annual turnover of EUR3bn in the past three years, to establish the joint venture.
It turned out that only Casinos Austria VLT Switzerland, with which it went on to establish a company called EVL d.o.o. which was split 51:49 in favor of the state, met this criteria.
According to the website, Casinos Austria VLT is a stock company that was founded in July last year in Switzerland, and is headed by Helmut Johann Wede, an Austrian citizen who is director of operations in Casinos Austria International.
The formula was copied from Macedonia where, through lobbying, Casinos Austria International became the Macedonian state lottery’s partner with a 49% stake in a joint venture company.
The law in Republika Srpska and tender conditions for selecting a partner were literally copied from Macedonia, which indicates that the initiators and participants are the same in both countries.
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