Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – Prior it signed the contract with state-owned Totalizator Sportowy, GTech had spent USD 20m. A mysterious consultant was providing for good relations with the Polish government.
Totalizator Sportowy (TS) spends USD 25-30m annually to serve the chain of lotto machines. Grytek, a company owned by GTech, the world’s biggest deliverer of IT systems for the gambling market, gets the money on the basis of a 10-year contract worth USD 250-300m signed in May 2001. It turns out that to get this contract GTech spent USD 20m. There are no details of how the money was spent.
The issue got public when the merger of GTech with Italian Lottomatika started. On August 29th, the EUR 4 billion merger was conducted. A company with EUR 7 billion of capitalization, operations in 50 countries, 6,300 employees and EUR 1.7 billion of sales will be founded. The new company is supposed to take over all GTech’s contracts. That’s why it contacted the authorities of, among others, 25 U.S. states. It turned out that the Department of Public Security in Texas is conducting investigation due to suspected transactions made by GTech in recent years. There are controversial consulting agreements and credits which were supposed to help GTech win contracts in Brazil, Trinidad, Tobago, the Czech Republic and Poland.
GTech has been present in Poland since 1991 when it signed its first contract with TS valid till October 2001. Two years before the contract expired, the head of TS, at that time Slawomir Sykucki, started preparations to announce a tender to service lotto machines in the years 2001-2011. Till May 2001 when the contract with GTech was signed, TS CEOs were changed twice. GTech won with Telenor and AWI and earns 4 percent of TS sales annually. A mysterious consultant helped the company win the contract. In 2000 he got USD 6m and the amount has grown to USD 20m today. GTech has no documents proving what the consultant has done.