Russia to move casinos from cities by 2009
According to a legislation approved by Russia’s lower house of parliament yesterday, the us$ 6 billion industry is to be driven out of Moscow, St. Petersburg and most of the rest of Russia. Once the bill is signed into law, gamblers will have only until mid-2009 to lay their bets in Russia’s major cities.
After that they’ll have to go to a remote part of Siberia or three other regions distant from Moscow. “This is a business based on vice. It brings no good,” said Vladimir Medinsky, deputy chairman of the parliament committee that drafted the legislation.
Yevgeny Kovtun, vice president of the Association of Gambling Businesses, which unites about 30 gaming companies, thinks that the legislation measures amount to a ban. “In the US people know about Las Vegas from childhood, but in Russia gambling tourism doesn’t exist,” he said.
Industry players say that while limitations are needed, a complete ban except for the gaming zones is harsh and could kill the industry. The restrictions, they say, assume Russians will be ready to jump on a plane and fly to the taiga — the sub-Arctic forest region — to make a bet.
With the exception of a drab national lottery, Soviet citizens had no outlet for their speculative urges. That changed with the chaotic arrival of capitalism. Russia’s oil-driven economic upswing of recent years sent new cash to the gaming tables. But a public backlash has grown.
Despite of Kovtun saying the restrictions are unnecessary as the market is already cooling and the volume of gaming equipment in use has shrunk by 20 percent in 2006 comparing to growth of more than 100 percent in some years, Medinsky does not think the industry is faltering.
“You have to be blind or an idiot to say that the market is shrinking,” he said. “I’m driving past the Havana cinema right now. Once there was a movie hall here, now half the building has been taken over by a casino.”
Moscow news