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The issue of judgment debt is set to resurrect once again, as the National Lotteries Authority (NLA) and SIMNET battle over $45million, which the latter has described as damages for breach of contract between the two entities. SIMNET, a subsidiary of Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), chaired by the Deputy Minister of Finance, Ms. Mona Quartey, and their lawyers -Tony Lithur and Samuel Cudjoe, are pushing for the said damages after the NLA had paid a debt of GHc30million for delayed payment of invoices with interest to the former, from an earlier court order. Inside sources of the NLA have described the move as fraudulent, since the lotteries regulator did not terminate a business agreement it had with SIMNET to support the smooth delivery of processes required for the marketing of lottery products in the country. Background SIMNET, The Chronicle learnt, was contracted to provide technical services to the then Department of National Lotteries, now the National Lotteries Authority, in the marketing of its products. The contract for SIMNET included a set-up of IT infrastructure with systems to sell lottery tickets and they were also expected to perform draws, procurement of terminals for the retailers and the marketing of the products introduced in the market. SIMNET was also expected to automate the draw and to also import terminals for quick penetration of the market, so as to minimize the impact of �banker to banker� operations nationwide. However, due to the delays in rolling out terminals for the penetration of the country on the part of SIMNET, the NLA Board of Directors took a decision sometime in 2007 to implement the automation program, following which decision it imported 10,000 terminals for distribution to retailers, so as to shut down the manual system, according to our sources. Ingenico of France, according to our sources, won the bid and was awarded the contract to implement this objective. SIMNET, we learnt, continued to provide the technical services to NLA, now under a new Board appointed by President Mills and Chaired by Dr. Agodzo. According to our sources, sometime in 2011, the Board of NLA, in keeping with best practices, called for an audit of the SIMNET process in order to ascertain that all was well with the SIMNET infrastructure and that, Ghana was not losing revenue. This request was informed by a data analysis performed by Ernst and Young on existing sampled lottery data, which raised some fundamental concerns, including training machines, trading and paying wins and other issues. However, SIMNET was said to have refused to co-operate with the audit process as they cited witch-hunting, among other concerns. The Board of NLA, as a result, decided to withhold payments from SIMNET in view of SIMNET�s refusal to co-operate with the audit process, which development led to a significant bad-blood developing between SIMNET and the NLA Board, which forced SIMNET to proceed to court to seek redress. Sources within SSNIT and NLA said both parties agreed in court to recruit an independent firm (a firm other than Ernst & Young) to undertake the audit exercise, which finally led to the granting of SIMNET�s request of some payment of its overdue invoices to be made by the NLA to enable them meet some operational commitments, which this paper learnt, was honoured by the NLA. Our information is that, whilst the court proceedings and the audit process continued, SIMNET unilaterally shut down the lottery system in the first week of October 2012, informing first NLA via SMS followed by a letter. The Chronicle is well informed that this was done to embarrass the NLA leadership and to create a crisis situation for the NLA as the INGENICO program was not yet fully implemented to serve as a viable alternative, a development which made the NLA�s revenue suffering a dent. The dip in revenue was short-lived, according to inside sources, because the Board had earlier initiated the implementation of the LOTS-Services platform, which brought the needed extra capacity to absorb the displaced retailers from the SIMNET platform. It would be recalled that, Dr. Agodzo, Board Chairman at the time, addressed a press conference to explain and to apologize for the disturbances in the services that were occasioned by the shutdown and announced that, the NLA would find alternative solutions to the situation in the absence of SIMNET platform. The legal suit Judgment on the law suit was not delivered before the appointment of a new Board by President John Dramani Mahama, when he took over the Presidency. As the matter progressed in Court, both parties, the NLA and SIMNET, agreed on the appointment of Price Waterhouse, as another expert, to conduct another independent audit following disagreements on some aspects of the work done by KPMG. Price Waterhouse was said to have extracted data from the system to do their work and after the completion of the first draft, SIMNET protested that additional data was available that needed to be taken into account and requested another extraction of data by Price Water House. The Chronicle is informed that after this second extraction, SIMNET became satisfied and the final report submitted by Price Water House favored SIMNET, while the judge ruled that, the delayed invoices be paid with interest and the NLA was believed to have paid this amount to SIMNET estimated at thirty million Ghana Cedis (GHc 30 million). Included in this amount, this paper learnt, is another two million Ghana Cedis (GHc 2 million) paid to SIMNET as the legal fees for their lawyers. But as if this was not enough, a second law suit against the NLA was filed by Mr. Tony Lithur on behalf of SIMNET, which went dormant to give way for the first suit that had been rejuvenated after the first judgment was attained. The second case was asking the NLA to pay US$45million to SIMNET as damages caused it by the NLA for engaging the services of INGENICO for the provision of the out-standings that SIMNET failed to deliver. Speaking on Citi Eyewitness News, a former Board Chairman of the NLA, Dr. Sali Agbozo, insisted that the SIMNET contract was not terminated and therefore, do not understand why ICT firm, chaired by Madam Helen Mona Quartey and their lawyers would institute legal action against the lotteries regulator for damages.