An estimated 600,000 people have lost their jobs this week after the two nations implemented legislation that places severe restrictions on the domestic casino industries.
Friday 3rd July 2009
After years of contemplation and debate, Russia and Ukraine have implemented new legislation this week that has seen most existing land-based casinos forced to close their doors, which has put an estimated 600,000 people out of work.
In Russia, the new rules go back to 2006 and legislation passed by then-President Vladimir Putin designed to stop the increasing rates of gambling addiction and weed out any criminal elements.
His successor, Dmitry Medvedev, declared in early May that there would be no reprieve and now casinos, bookmakers and slot parlours must close or relocate to sites in four remote zones; Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, the Primorsky region on the Pacific coast, the mountainous Altai region in Siberia or near the southern cities of Krasnodar and Rostov, which is hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics.
However, planned gambling resorts for the areas are several months and often years behind schedule with many experts predicting that the Russian move will only drive gambling underground and criminalise it even more.
In addition, the legislation does not apply to the sport of poker with many casinos relaunching themselves as poker clubs and arguing that it should be considered as a ‘game of chance’. The Mayor for Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, has criticised such efforts to circumvent the law and has opened a toll-free telephone hotline for member’s of the public to anonymously report any violations.
'When you sit at casino and you play poker or preference, it's a casino,” he told the Associated Press news agency.
“But, when you play poker at a poker club it's considered a sport?'
In the Ukraine, efforts to close casinos were given a boost in May when nine people were killed in a fire at a slots parlour in Dnipropetrovsk in the east of the nation. Lawmakers soon pounced by passing legislation that temporarily bans gambling while the government draws up plans to restrict the activity to special zones, most likely in Crimea on the Ukraine's southern Black Sea coast.
