Colbert I. King writes in his Washington Post opinion column that a possible investigation into the D.C. Council’s award of the city’s $38 million lottery contract could unveil a cloak of secrecy surrounding online gambling and a host of other issues.
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“We don’t discuss ongoing investigations,” D.C. Inspector General Charles J. Willoughby told me this week. “We don’t confirm or deny that an investigation is underway,” he said.
But I concluded from reading between the lines of our conversation that Willoughby is pursuing the July 2010 request by the city’s then-attorney general, Peter Nickles, for an investigation of the D.C. Council’s involvement in the award of the city’s $38 million lottery contract.
If that is true and if Willoughby turns loose his investigators (that’s a big if), the inspector general may penetrate the veil of secrecy cloaking the council’s online gambling shenanigans as well as determine the extent to which — if at all — political connections and cronyism have led to waste and abuse in the lottery procurement process.
… Case in point: Intralot, the Greek gambling company that was awarded the lottery contract in December 2009. Ward 8 council member Marion Barry told Jeffrey Anderson of the Washington Times in July 2010 that he let Intralot know it needed to take on a local partner if it wanted the council to approve the pact. Barry, according to the Times, said: “I sent word that the contract was DOA without a local partner.”
Read Colbert I. King’s entire column at the Washington Post.
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