Translated material
Deputy Roulette
Regional legislators exchanged experiences of persecution of the gambling business
Despite the unprecedented legal persecution to which the gambling business in Russia is subjected (from January 1, 2009, it will be “imprisoned” in four special gambling “reservations”, banned in all other places), this seems to be not enough for some legislators.State Duma deputies from A Just Russia, who have decided to make the fight against gambling addiction one of the topics of their election campaign in the fight for seats in the future Duma , intend to introduce a bill in the fall that would allow regional authorities to limit the operation of gaming establishments until the end of 2007. According to the initiators of the bill, those regions that did not have time to exercise their right before July 1, 2007 will have time to “correct.”
Regional authorities received the right to close gambling establishments on July 1. But proposals to close, repurpose, or move gaming tables to other regions did not come as a surprise. Already in May-June, regional authorities warned market participants of their intention to ban the gambling industry on their territory. Let us recall that by the beginning of 2009, all gambling establishments will have to close or move to one of four special gambling zones - they, according to federal law, will be built in the Altai and Primorsky territories, in the Kaliningrad region , as well as on the border between the Krasnodar region and Rostov region.
By mid-summer , 38 Russian regions banned gambling establishments on their territory . The gambling business is completely prohibited by the authorities of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Chechnya, Belgorod, Kurgan, Irkutsk, Tambov, Ivanovo, Kaluga regions, Udmurtia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Dagestan, Adygea, Mordovia, Tuva, Yakutia and the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.
In Tatarstan, gambling is almost completely prohibited - with the exception of two specially designated zones. In the Novgorod region, a complete ban on the operation of gambling establishments will be introduced in a year, from July 1, 2008. In the Ryazan region - from August 1, 2007, in Buryatia, Arkhangelsk and Lipetsk regions - from January 1, 2008. Only slot machines were banned in the Chelyabinsk, Omsk, Saratov, Smolensk and Sakhalin regions. Voronezh, Novosibirsk, Moscow, Leningrad regions, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, Bashkortostan, as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg will ban slot machines from January 1, 2008.
A meeting of regional legislators was held at the Federation Council yesterday, at which deputies told how they managed to persuade the executive branch not to wait until 2009 and to step on the throat of the gaming industry earlier.
Deputy of the Tambov Regional Duma Alexander Aleshkin described the ideal scenario for supporters of closing gaming establishments: first, the initiative group collected signatures in the region for the closure of casinos, then the regional Duma unanimously voted for the law, and all gaming establishments voluntarily closed.
Representatives of the legislative power of the Ivanovo region, according to regional Duma deputy Viktor Slezin, were “blackmailed” by the gambling business: “They said that unemployed croupiers and waiters would take to the streets to protest, but they managed to gather only twenty students.”
Ryazan parliamentarian Sergei Isakov spoke about the unsuccessful attempts of the local gambling business to defend their rights in court and said that in the consolidated budget of the Ryazan region, income from casino taxation amounts to no more than 1%.
But the governor of the Tula region, Vyacheslav Dudka, was not ready to abandon taxes from this area ahead of time. Local parliament member Galina Fomina told Vremya Novostei how, in response to a request from the regional Duma, the governor referred to the fact that “according to the law on the budget of the Tula region for 2007, the tax on gambling business is planned to generate revenues in the amount of 230-- 266.5 thousand rubles.” “Back in April 2006, deputies passed a law tightening the work of this business, but the court decided that we had exceeded our authority because we were trying to tighten the regulations for business activities,” said the deputy. “The Supreme Court took our side, but then the governor decided that cannot refuse taxes and that now, after the adoption of the federal law, Tula legislation complies with it.”