As the government pushes to regulate web shops by July 1, FML Group of Companies CEO Craig Flowers suggested yesterday that opponents to the move are themselves suggesting they want the government to allow web shops to “run rampantly”.
Flowers, who has been reluctant to speak on the controversial matter since the failed January 2013 gambling referendum, appeared as a guest on Guardian Radio 96.9 FM’s ‘Morning Blend’ in his capacity as president of the Golf Federation to promote the golf industry in The Bahamas.
Flowers was asked by the show’s host, Dwight Strachan, how people who voted against the regularization and taxation of web shops should feel as the government moves to do the opposite of their wishes expressed on January 28, 2013. “Let me assume that you would have voted no to the questions asked, that we should not regulate web shops,” he said.
“Should we leave them as they are?”
Suggesting what the views might be of some people who voted no, Flowers continued, “We should let them run rampant. We should leave the “ backdoors open. We should let whatever, drugs, money laundering run in and out.
“I am speaking about the question, and the question was whether or not you, who voted no, you are saying leave web shops alone.”
But Flowers was not suggesting that his web shops are involved in activities like money laundering, neither did he point to any other web shops involved in such activities.
Last January, voters were asked if they support the regularization and taxation of web shops and the creation of a national lottery.
The majority of people who voted said no to both questions.
“That perception is something else. The question was very clear, whether or not you, who voted no is saying, let them go all over the place, leave them alone.
“And the government said that was the question (whether to regulate and tax web shops), and the answer was leave them alone.”
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