05/10/2009, Online casino
Moscow authorities expressed their concerns about the recent prohibition on gambling in Russia, which is being replaced by online gambling and lottery machines, only three months after the gambling ban in Russia.
Since the 1st of July 2009, when the gambling ban caused the loss of thousands of jobs in Russia, legal gambling was exiled to four geographical areas where there is no activity yet. Casinos were restricted to the Western exclave of Kaliningrad, the Primorsky region on the Pacific coast, the Altai region in Siberia and near the southern cities of Krasnodar and Rostov.
Internet cafes providing access to online gambling has tripled lately and the Moscow Deputy Mayor Sergei Baidakov said that they are “seriously concerned about the rise of the surrogate technologies” as “they are the byproduct of imperfect legislation.”
Baidakov also recognized that the budget suffered from the ban on gambling, but he said that this “is nil compared to the benefits to the health of the nation”.
Sergei Baidakov said that a third of Moscow's 525 casinos and slot machines halls are selling instant lottery tickets.
The police authorities are continuing to search out for illicit casinos and slot halls.
Casinos spread all over in Russia after the 1991 Soviet collapse and in 2008 the gaming industry managed to provide over 400,000 jobs and had a turnover of $3.6 billion.
The gambling oppression started in 2006, when Vladimir Putin compared gambling to the “alcoholization” of the country.