THE Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office leadership is silently working hard without fanfare to make the agency a potent revenue-collection machine of the Duterte administration. As they continue improving the agency’s services, PCSO General Manager Alexander Balutan and Chairman Anselmo Simeon Pinili welcomed the International Chamber of Commerce-International Arbitration Court (ICC-ICA) decision to dismiss the case filed by the Philippine Gaming and Management Corp. (PGMC) in connection with the PCSO’s P10.9-billion Nationwide Online Lottery System (NOLS).
The judgment unshackles the PCSO to finally modernize the system of its online lottery games like Lotto, digit games, Keno and Small Town Lottery (STL).
Does this mean the arbitral award to the PCSO has rendered moot and academic the writ of injunction against PCSO’s NOLS earlier issued by a Regional Trial Court (RTC) in Makati City. Let’s see what happens next.
Because of this good news, the PCSO is grateful to the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel (OGCC), which helped the PCSO’s Legal Department in defending the case against PGMC at the ICC-ICA.
Recently, the OGCC faced a controversy when President Duterte fired the agency’s chief for alleged corruption.
Based on OGCC’s records, the PCSO’s victory at the ICC-ICA is one of the largest cases it won in the past decade.
As far as I know, the PCSO started the public bidding of its NOLS early in 2017. Had the PGMC not interfered by securing a temporary restraining order, followed later by an injunction, the project would have been working by now.
On August 3, 2017, RTC Branch 143 Presiding Judge Maximo de Leon granted the injunction case filed by PGMC. Meaning, no public bidding on the project until the case is resolved in court. PGMC then filed an arbitration case before the ICC-ICA.
PGMC is connected with Berjaya Philippines, which is 88.26-percent owned by Berjaya Sports Toto Bhd. According to PGMC, the PCSO allegedly violated its legal rights to open NOLS. The company claimed exclusive rights as service provider of the PCSO’s online lottery system for Luzon.
However, a document I received showed that the ICC-ICA dismissed in February PGMC’s case against the PCSO.
ICC-ICA had advised the RTC in Makati City, Branch 143, regarding the dismissal of PGMC’s case. The Makati court announced through an order it released on May 25.
ICC-ICA declared that PGMC has no “exclusive contractual right” to supply PCSO’s online lottery system in Luzon.
Worse, ICC-ICA dismissed PGMC’s P7.6-billion claims for damages against the PCSO and awarded the latter reasonable costs and expenses in the amount of P53.5 million. PGMC is also ordered to reimburse PCSO $200,000 for the share of the advanced costs.
As this developed, Balutan and Pinili and all the men and women of the PCSO are gearing up to upgrade the agency’s online lottery system to increase revenue collection, which will fund its charity programs, especially for medical assistance to the poorest of the poor.
After more than 20 years, PGMC’s contract with PCSO will expire on August 21. It got the contract in 1996 during the term of President Fidel Ramos.
This is the only time NOLS, which has been serving more than 10,000 lotto outlets nationwide, will be open for public bidding.
For everyone’s information, Pacific Online System Corp., whose contract will expire on July 31 this year, holds the contract for the Visayas-Mindanao.
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