Old, confused and mentally ill – they were ruined by the S lottery

Published 18 September 2024 at 14.57

Domestic. Expressen has reviewed debt settlement decisions where over-indebted people have not been able to pay the Social Democrats' lottery subscriptions and have been forced to hand over everything they own to the Swedish Enforcement Agency. Among the applications are gambling addicts with millions in debt and mentally ill people with good husbands who were allowed to buy lottery tickets on credit.

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Several people have been allowed to play at Kombispel on credit even though they have a good husband due to mental illness, addiction or other difficult problems, Expressen's review shows.

An autistic man in his 40s who suffered from several psychoses is one of those trying to get rid of the debts to the Social Democrats. According to the good man's application for debt settlement, the man finds it very difficult to manage everyday life, but it is not clear whether he was granted debt settlement.

On the other hand, one person that Kombispel won against in court was a man who had been abusing drugs since the age of nine and had frequent contact with addiction centers and psychiatry. The court considered that the man had not sufficiently “come to grips with his addiction” and rejected his application for debt settlement.

Unlike other gambling companies, Kombilotterie can sell lottery tickets against invoice, which makes it possible to sell lottery tickets to gambling addicts people who gambled away all their money, on credit.

According to the law, however, the marketing must still be moderate and must not be aggressive, but it is not something that the relevant authorities have any interest in reviewing in this particular case .

The Gambling Inspectorate and the Swedish Consumer Agency have joint supervisory responsibility over S lotteries, but none of the authorities – which started two fruitless audits of Fria Tider in recent years – has however initiated any investigation case against the Social Democrats.

The Gambling Inspectorate explains this by saying that the authority does not consider able to exercise supervision over illegal activities outsourced to subcontractors.

“The Gambling Inspectorate does not have any legal support to exercise direct supervision of telemarketing companies or other cooperation partners to the license holders,” the authority writes in a press release.

< p>However, it is not certain that the Social Democrats have the right to be paid for their lot sales on credit. According to a High Court decision from 1989, not all gambling debts are automatically invalid, but it has not been tested whether the lending that the Social Democrats engage in – where players are tricked into paying back the debt with winnings – leads to a valid claim or not.< /p>