Principle theme

27 August 2010

The games go on

Nobody can say with certainty today whether gaming business is alive or dead in Russia today. The point is that illegal gambling is prospering now, while only one casino, called “The Oracle”, is operating legally in the southern Azov-City gambling zone today.     Gambling is as old as the world. Experts say that compulsive gamblers make up approximately 7 per cent of the population in any country but only one per cent of them go to gambling casinos regularly. The majority of civilized states purposefully limit the gambling industry, establishing special zones for it. And Russia has done the same. The Federal Law, banning gambling casinos in the country, except in the four zones specially established for this purpose, came into effect on July 1st, 2009. There were plans to set up them in the Maritime Territory, in the Altai Region, in the Kaliningrad Region, and also on the border of the Krasnodar Region and the Rostov Region. But if the Kuban Las Vegas  - this is how the gambling zone in the south of Russia is called - plans to open a second casino  next month, nothing has been done for the organization  of the other zones.       The decision on the gambling zones was a correct but not a well-thought-out one, the Chairman of the Council of the Russian Association For Development of Gambling Business Valery Ivanov says: We’ve chosen such zones, which are not situated in close vicinity of  roads, good hotels, cities, and cultural, including tourist and recreation centres, where people like to spend their time and to gamble in addition.  After the Federal Law came into force, the gambling business, whose annual turnover reached 6 billion dollars hasn’t disappeared anywhere: it has either become illegal or has gone into the alleged “lottery business.” The scale of the illegal gambling industry is impressive: in one place or another the country’s law-enforcement bodies discover at least one gambling casino every day, Valery Ivanov says. According to the Russian interior ministry, the country’s police closed more than 4,000 one-armed bandits’ arcades and 70 casinos last year. But more than 700 clubs, masked as “lottery centres”, continue operating in the country. This is more than was before the Federal Law came into force. Because of big revenues, which the illegal gambling business enables its organizers to receive, it is very hard to combat it. And world experience offers proof, as the Deputy Chairman of the Commission on Tourism, and Industry of Hospitality and Amusements of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs Dmitry Slobodkin says: In the USA the illegal gambling business makes up one-third of the legal business volume, that is, 380 billion dollars. In Israel it is banned but there’re more than 100 casinos there. It is banned in Turkey as well, but there’re casinos there too. In China, which is often referred to as a county, where the gambling industry is non-existent, according to information available, 254 billion dollars were confiscated an added to the budget after the inspections of the illegal gambling industry. Experts say that the government should correct its strategy towards the gambling zones and gambling business as such. The strengthening of the fight the law-enforcement bodies are waging against illegal gamblers should be accompanied by the efforts to boost the legal gambling business, which will start ousting the illegal one, as experts believe.

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