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02-09-2012
Erschienen ist das Buch über die Geschichte der Geschicklichkeits-und Glücksspiele in der UdSSR ->
30-08-2012
Ukazała się książka o historii gier komercyjnych i hazardowych w ZSRR ->
28-08-2012
Azardul în Uniunea Sovietică ->
27-08-2012
L’histoire des jeux d’hasard à l’époque de l’Union Soviétique est enfin publiée! ->
26-08-2012
New book about gambling, lottery and cards in the USSR ->
22-08-2012
Gambling and lotteries in the USSR ->
31-08-2009
Clearly Focused on the Future – 2nd Balkan Entertainment & Gaming Expo ->
25-08-2009
Poker league faces closure ->
19-08-2009
Russian official wants to crack down on online gambling ->
10-07-2009
The Opening of Storm International’s X.O. Casino in Bishkek ->

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On the Border of Kazakhstan — Dreams of Vegas

Las Vegas in Siberia?

For about 13 billion rubles, a mere US$480 million, it could happen, or so say

officials of Altai Territory, a 168,000-square-kilometer chunk of south-central Russia on

the Kazakh border.

A sparsely populated land of steppes, rolling mountains, lakes and rivers, farms and

mines, with 2.6 million people, about 15 inhabitants per square kilometer, Altai is

designated one of four zones where Russia's casinos will have to emigrate when a new

law banishing the industry from the country's major population centers takes effect in two

years.

Altai's Economic and Investment Department has unveiled a plan for an expansive

resort complex of 50 to 100 square kilometers encompassing casinos, hotels, restaurants,

ski slopes, tennis courts and recreation facilities near a village called Solnovka, which

lies between the Biryuzovaya Katun special economic zone and the holiday town of

Belokurikha at the foothills of the Altai Mountains, popular for its mineral springs.

A road will be laid connecting the proposed gambling center to Biysk Airport, the

department said.

"A whole new city will be built on the hitherto vacant lot," Mikhail Shchetinin, who

heads the Economic and Investment Department, told Itar-Tass news agency. "Gamers

will come to us not only from Russian regions but also from near and far abroad. The

gamers will come here, the same as people from all over the world visit Las Vegas."

Yevgeny Kovtun, vice president of the Association of Gambling Businesses, a trade group representing 30 operators, is skeptical. Russian gambling is almost exclusively

"locals" gambling, and it is suspected that few city dwellers will board a plane or train to

journey across several time zones to Siberian taiga to place a bet. "In the U.S. people

know about Las Vegas from childhood," Kovtun said, "but in Russia gambling tourism

doesn't exist."

This of course is the problem with the zones law, which, say industry advocates like

Kovtun, amounts to an effective demolition of legalized casino gambling in Russia. The

good news, if it can be called such, is that President Vladimir Putin, who pushed the

measure through to easy passage in the Russian parliament, will be out of office by the

time it takes effect on July 1, 2009. So the industry may yet save at least some of the

scores of glittering gambling palaces in Moscow and St. Petersburg that have spurred

Russia's growth over the last decade into a $5 billion-plus market.

But the clock is ticking. Police have shut down several big city casinos they say were

linked to Georgian mafia, and Moscow officials have all but completed a purge of the

capital's stand-alone slot machine industry, which mushroomed in the form of arcades on

nearly every street corner during the years when the industry was growing by leaps and

bounds in the absence of any government regulation. More than 1,900 slot operations

have been closed to date, about 70 percent of the city's total.

The new law also states that, as of this July, only casinos larger than 800 square meters

and arcades larger than 100 square meters will be licensed. Operators also will have to

show net assets greater than 600 million rubles ($22.5 million) to qualify and they must

offer at least 10 table games and 50 slots.

In the new zones, only Russian-owned companies meeting these criteria will be granted

permits, and permits will be good only for five years, at least initially.

Two of these zones are in European Russia: Kaliningrad Region on the Baltic Sea

between Poland and Lithuania, which contains a population of about 930,000 and is

separated from Russia proper by eastern Poland; and an area north of the Caucasus

bordering the Rostov Region and Krasnodar Territory on the Sea of Azov.

The fourth zone is Primorsky Territory in the Far East between Manchuria, North

Korea and the Sea of Japan. This mostly mountainous, sparsely populated area, whose

principal city is Vladivostok, contains about 2.2 million inhabitants spread across

166,000 square kilometers, 12 people per square kilometer. Eighty percent of it is forest

where tigers still roam. About the best that can be said of it from an industry perspective

is that its proximity to China could make it attractive to that country's gambling masses.

— James Rutherford

IGWB

ADIB’s news

11-03-2009
Moscow's Casinos Go All-InOn Poker ->
06-03-2009
Nella monografia affrontate evoluzioni storiche e attuale quadro normativo dei paesi dell'ex Unione Sovietica ->
18-02-2009
A Bet on the President ->
10-02-2009
Interview at MyCasCom with Evgeny Kovtun. ->
19-12-2008
The first English-language edition of Evgeny Kovtun’s book “Legal regulation of gambling in former USSR countries” ->
14-11-2008
Igor Ballo: Law is always better than lawlessness ->

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