WILLEMSTAD - If lottery offices can no longer get a bank account, we go back twenty or thirty years. Then all payments will be made in cash again.

And we don't want that. That is what the director of the Fundashon Wega di Number Korsou (Curaçao Lottery Foundation) says.

He responds to the decision of the Maduro & Curiel’s Bank to close the accounts and end the relationship with lottery offices on the island. The bank is taking this action in their process of de-risking. The MCB Bank says that these lottery offices also deal with foreign banks and that could lead to money laundering and the financing of terrorist groups.

It is not clear whether other banks will follow MCB Bank’s decision.