By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

ATTORNEY Wayne Munroe, who represents the owners of five webshops, said yesterday his clients are “very concerned” that the government is shutting the door to “billions” of potential foreign clients by limiting who can participate in online gaming through local webshops.

His comments came after Tourism Minister Obie Wilchcombe confirmed that the new Gaming Bill would prevent foreigners from gambling from other jurisdictions through websites operated by local webshops. Mr Wilchcombe is the minister responsible for gaming.

During an interview with The Tribune, Mr Munroe said his clients are less concerned about who will be able to “walk over the bridge to one of their webshops” and are more worried about the billions of potential online clients they can lose because of the government’s restrictions.

“There are some six million people that visit the Bahamas, only about three million of them qualify by age to game in the Bahamas,” Mr Munroe said.

“There are about 300,000 people living in the Bahamas and only about 150,000 of them qualify to game. But then if you look at the billions of people in the world that could have potentially logged on online and use my clients’ services, the government is doing them an injustice.

“The government cannot control the world wide web,” he added. “You need an account to game online so they may put regulations on accounts that are opened to allow only Bahamians to open accounts. So our concern is, they are blocking Bahamian entrepreneurs from going after the world. That is what we are focused on, not just these little dots.”

According to the draft Gaming Bill, web shops would be permitted to legally engage in cash betting transactions

on numbers games only and with domestic players only. The term domestic player refers to a person who is a resident in the Bahamas, has a permanent residency certificate or work permit or is married to someone with permanent residence status or a work permit.

The latest draft also states that casinos would have the exclusive right to foreign players, both locally and online.

The bill also upholds the status quo which prevents Bahamians from gambling in casinos.

Mr Munroe said Bahamians

should be treated the same and “sometimes more favourably” than foreigners. He said from the draft bill he has seen, there are some things that are favourable to his clients and some things that have to be discussed with policy makers.

The government is expected to table the new bill soon.