Russians veto casino bill
The Russian State Duma–their version of parliament–voted down a bill that would have created a new regulatory framework for Russian casinos. Existing regulation, it seems, is something of a slapdash affair. From RIA Novosti:
The bill’s doom does not mean gamblers and casino proprietors have several more years to enjoy the absence of related legislation, some happily drawing super-profits, others squandering their money, as before. The fate of the Russian gambling business is sealed, bill or no bill. Debates on the issue have been raging for years, with numerous arguments for and against. The State Duma discussed bills, one after another. Authorities took the hard line in some parts of the country. For example, all casinos and slot machine halls were closed within two days in Chechnya and North Ossetia. Now, President Vladimir Putin has issued a final verdict. He likened gambling to drug addiction and alcoholism in a public address, and offered the State Duma a bill of his own to fetter the vice.
Recent research by the Moscow Serbsky Psychiatry Institute produced some sensational revelations: gambling has become an obsession with more than two million Russians. Moscow, with its enormous number of slot machines, has 330,000 compulsive gamblers. The owner of just one slot machine makes an average profit of $10,000 per month. Gambling business tax returns have struck a seven billion ruble mark, roughly $260 million.
Many Russians hate gambling. State Duma member Vladimir Medinsky, author of one of the legislative amendment draft versions, went so far as to say concrete walls topped with barbed wire ought to be built round “casinos and other such filth” to keep young people and old-timers away. Another parliamentarian, Anatoly Aksakov, offered a package of Civil Code amendments envisaging incapacitation of gamblers.
The casino lobby fought back. The state regulation bill took so long to appear in parliament for its second reading partly due to a huge number of proposed amendments providing legal loopholes for proprietors to continue reaping their fabulous profits. Now, President Putin’s draft bill leaves no room for compromise. It envisages a complete ban on Internet gambling throughout Russia, and proposes to establish analogues of Las Vegas by 2009 - areas of legalized gambling under strict state control. As the presidential blueprint has it, there will be no more than four such gambler’s paradises in the entire country.
RIA Novosti - Opinion & analysis - Gambling to be exiled in Russia
I did an interview with NTV, a Russian TV channel, a week or so ago, and was struck at how anti-gambling the questions were. At one point, the reporter asked me whether gambling was “less uncivilized” in Las Vegas, now that all gamblers didn’t lose everything they had and blow their brains out (his words) at the tables.
I simply had to say that there was no record of a time when corpses littered the streets (as they would if all gamblers promptly suicided).
People have said that Macau was a den of iniquity before 2002, but from this story it seems that Moscow is the real 21st century Dodge City.
Posted in Gambling and Legal Stuff, History and Politics, Europe | Comments Off