Bashkir authorities actively struggle with underground gaming business

Active counteraction to spreading of illegal gaming business is initiated by the President RB Rustem Khamitov in the Republic and the appeal of a young Ufa girl to the President RB during the ”direct line” in the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” in November 2010 has become the main reason of this struggle. The girl said her brother left the whole salary in the illegal gaming clubs and asked the President to undertake all possible measures in order to close these casinos.

The President RB has ordered the Ministry of internal affairs in RB to organize and intensify this work.

For three months 2011 the policemen have closed 104 gaming clubs and arrested 2150 game-machines. The work on stopping the illegal activity is going on in Bashkiria.

For the reference: Since July 1, 2009, the gaming business may work only in the special reservations according to the Russian law. But in reality gaming business went to ground, working under the mask of quite legal lottery or internet clubs. In order to make the master of such club answerable for illegal actions the police have to prove that people gamble there, i.e. they are busy with illegal business undertakings. Besides, the sum of such illegal income has to be specified too. The police are in want of the legal base: the law doesn’t indicate precisely what has to be determined as gaming, so the owners of the gaming clubs are most often are called to account only for the administrative violations and after paying fines they can easily return to their illegal business again.