A young man plays Jack-Pot gambling machine in Orlyonok Hotel, Moscow.
Photo: Alexey Kudenko
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Duma Consolidates Gambling
The State Duma’s Economic Policy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism Committee recommended November 10, 2005 to pass in the first reading a bill that would govern all gambling in the country. The basic novelty is imposing a ban on all street gambling machines with gambling sanctioned inside special gambling establishments exclusively. And this is only the beginning. In the second step, the deputies intend to move gambling to restricted area.
At present, Russia has no single law on gambling. Eager to rectify this omission, a group of deputies headed by Valery Draganov, who chairs the Duma’s committee on economic policy, stepped in with a new draft aimed at regulating gambling in general and production and location of gambling machines in particular.
First of all, the bill sets forth a closed list of gambling types that will be authorized, including casino business, arrangement and conduction of games of chance and bets, production and sale of gambling equipment. Pursuant to the bill, the actual gambling could be carried out at gambling establishments exclusively and only by persons, who are at least 18 years old. Therefore, a raft of street gambling machines will be outside the law once the bill is passed.
Another mandatory provision is availability of at least 20 gambling machines in a playing hall and at least 15 gambling tables and 45 gambling machines in a casino. So, there will be no gambling machines in metro or stores, meaning the deputies have reasoned it’s high time to consolidate this business.
On the same day, the Duma’s committee went through another bill that also related to totalizators and gambling establishments. The bill brought in by deputy Alexander Lebedev and deputy Andrey Samoshin suggested that all gambling establishments should be kept at the distance of at least a kilometer from any population centers. The deputies rejected the bill but not because they didn’t favor the idea. Vladimir Medinsky, who is the deputy chairman of the economic policy committee, said the removal from Moscow, for instance, means gambling taxes will go not to the city’s budget but to the budget of the Moscow Region. Besides, it is not easy to determine the so-called frontier areas, the deputy pointed out, advocating creation of restricted areas instead.
It appears Moscow will hardly be trimmed of this lucrative business. Moscow Duma’s Speaker Vladimir Platonov pledged yesterday the gambling business wouldn’t be “evicted” from Moscow as it would be “wrong” to do it. However the officials may embrace the restricted areas’ idea, as the city will lose no tax revenues in this case.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 11, 2005
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