Gambling lords, protectors out to destroy

Christmas Party in 2017 and sup operation.

- P10 million on a Christmas Party

Balutan denied spending such amount of money and noted that the actual budget was only about P6 million, and half of the amount was spent on food and the venue.

- lafuerte, who has been very active amusement committee hearing on - lowing big-time gambling lords to

He particularly cited Even - edly owned by gambling operator Rodolfo “Bong” Pineda.

the contract of Evenchance for violating its regulations, Balutan said.

P1.7B a month

- ernment campaign to eradicate illegal numbers games.

But the initial implementation was not successful in curbing illegal gambling, as it provided operators a legal front for their illegal numbers games.

Balutan said it was only during the term of President Rodrigo Duterte that serious focus was rules and regulations were issued to defeat all existing illegal numbers games in the country like

“last-two” and he said.

- provinces in the past years, the new to raise the take to P1.7 billion a month, Balutan said.

This was because of rules in the computation of the presumptive Authorized Agent Corporations of the population of a particular province where they are operating.

operators rose to 56 in 2016 and 83 in 2017, Balutan said.

“We were able to break the monopoly of gambling lords and allowed corporations to join the

300K jobs

the income of jueteng and other illegal numbers games, as well as them, have been affected, the for

He said illegal gambling had been a source of funds for some - - ing election season.

“Now that some gambling operators have decided to go legal help government fight jueteng, the source is now gone,” Balutan explained.

cited the case of Quezon province that used to serve as haven for sev- eral jueteng operators. When the - bling operations started to decline.

they migrated to legal and now according to our assessment there is no more illegal gambling sa Quezon,” he added.

Apart from eradicating illegal legal jobs for some 300,000 former jueteng workers.

- pected the attacks from gambling lords and some local officials illegal gambling and would lose

“This is a battle of nerve and morals. I will not allow anybody