Games with electricity

Closing a casino in Russia turned out to be not so easy

Gambling establishments began mass migration across the country. From regions where gambling is completely prohibited, they are transported to places where the ban comes into force at a later date. By mid-August, slot machines were eliminated in the Kemerovo, Ryazan, Belgorod regions, Yakutia, Adygea and 16 other regions. And the gamers themselves are trying to find new ways to satisfy their passion: in some places they are buying lottery tickets, in others they are trying to play on the Internet, and in others, telephone one-armed bandits have become widespread.

In the Kemerovo region, employees of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate liquidated 3.5 thousand slot machines. The head of the department of consumer market and entrepreneurship of the regional administration, Elena Mazanko, told reporters about this yesterday. In the region, gaming establishments have not yet been prohibited, and the checks concerned compliance with the norms of the new law on the placement of machines. From July 1, slot machines and casinos must not be located in residential buildings, near schools, hospitals and stadiums, and the winning percentage in the machines must be at least 90%. The checks revealed that in none of the inspected machines this percentage exceeded 80%, and their owners were given until August 15 to either eliminate the violations or close. The deadline expired and the “sentence” was carried out.

On August 15, all gambling establishments in the Ryazan region were closed. From July 1, 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 Chukotka Autonomous Okrug.

As many analysts predicted, the closure of casinos stimulated the creation of underground gambling establishments. In the republics of the North Caucasus, these are often buses containing gaming equipment. In other regions there are literally “underground” places: an illegal casino in Yakutia was discovered in the back room of a shopping center. In the Altai Territory, the authorities, dejected by the persistence of casinos - they are closed, sealed, and at night they open again - are trying to fight the gambling business by cutting off their power supply. In Saratov, this method was used exactly the opposite: wanting to avoid administrative liability and confiscation of slot machines, the administrator and security guard of the gaming hall turned off the power supply, locked the room with the tax inspector inside, who was drawing up a protocol for inspecting the hall, and left it. Only 40 minutes later, investigators from the prosecutor's office arrived and released the tax inspector.

Kaluga gamblers flocked to lottery kiosks, providing them with triple revenue in the month and a half that had passed since the closure of casinos in the region. The number of virtual casinos in the country has also increased. Gambling using information and telecommunication networks, including the Internet, is illegal, but the demand for it is growing due to gamblers in those regions where gambling is completely prohibited. A new type of illegal gambling has also emerged - telephone gambling. You can pay for a session of such a game through web cards, and the password to access the game is given via SMS message.

Starting from the new year, the list of regions where gambling will be outlawed will be expanded to Buryatia, Arkhangelsk and Lipetsk regions. From the same date, casinos will remain on their territory, but slot machines will be banned in the Voronezh, Novosibirsk, Moscow, Leningrad regions, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Bashkortostan, as well as Moscow and St. Petersburg. And by mid-2009, according to current legislation, there should be only four gambling zones left in Russia - in the Kaliningrad region, Altai and Primorsky territories, as well as on the borders of the Rostov region and Krasnodar region.

Irina SKLYAROVA