Gambling is an organized gambling activity using gaming tables, slot machines, sweepstakes, and betting techniques.
Activities are carried out for profit. Gambling business can receive income from winnings, charging fees for playing a game, making a bet.
The first casino in Moscow began its work in 1989. Then they decided to organize a gambling business at the State Committee for Tourism hotels for foreigners, so that the state budget was replenished with an additional source of income, and to obtain a freely convertible currency, which was very lacking in those days.
The Savoy Hotel became a pioneer in Moscow. It was in it that the first casino was located, although in the USSR it was the second, since a year and a half earlier the casinos were opened in Tallinn.
Already in the nineties, the gambling business gained a considerable turnover, but in connection with the collapse of the USSR, it was more semi-criminal in nature.
Gambling Habitat
Until 2006, the main habitat for the gambling business was based in Moscow and St. Petersburg. At that time, there were over 6400 licenses in the state registry. The main monopolists were the Ritzio Entertainment Group and Storm International. More than 400,000 registered slot machines from these two monopolists alone, their excessive progressive growth did not leave the authorities indifferent.
In 2006, a proposal was made to withdraw the gaming business from Moscow and St. Petersburg and create four gaming zones. The proposal resonated with several parties, on December 26 of the same year a bill was passed.
Four play areas
Four game zones included Kaliningrad Oblast, Altai Krai, Krasnodar Krai, and Primorsky Krai.
About taxation
A gambling tax is a tax that an organization must pay to the state for carrying out entrepreneurial activities in the field of gambling.
To date, there is only one of the four gaming zones, which is located in the Krasnodar Territory - Azov City.
Gambling tax provides for the following rates:
- From 25 to 125 thousand for one gaming table, for one betting office, for one tote.
- From 1500 to 7500 for one slot machine.
Each object of taxation must be registered with the tax authority at the place of installation.
The tax period is one calendar month.
About the law
Since 2009, when the law on gambling came into force, the activity of casinos and other gambling establishments in all places except designated gaming zones was banned in Russia.
But not all owners of this business liked the law, so many chose to go underground.
Because of this, in 2010, the government created a monitoring group and set a goal for it - to identify and close all illegal gaming establishments, confiscate gaming equipment, and impose a rather large fine on illegal entrepreneurs.
A free hotline was opened to accept information about gaming establishments.
Thanks to her and the responsible citizens who voluntarily reported the presence of an underground institution in their home, more than 1,400 addresses were collected and raids were successfully carried out on them. Gambling establishments were closed, equipment was confiscated, and their owners were prosecuted. The General Prosecutor’s Office dealt with these issues.
In 2011, thanks to citizens who reported the addresses of clandestine establishments near their homes, 396 gambling establishments were discovered and closed and more than 10,000 units of gambling equipment were confiscated.
The monitoring group operates today, any citizen has the opportunity to report on the location of the illegal gaming business by calling the hotline.
About poker in Russia
Gambling in Russia, in particular poker, became the most popular with the collapse of the USSR. Then there was a fashion for everything foreign, and the card game, which was different from the Soviet "fiddling fool," came to the taste of many gamblers.
Officially playing poker in Russia is allowed in the gaming zone (at the moment this is the Krasnodar Territory). But not all poker fans can afford games thousands of kilometers from home, so they resort to the services of illegal establishments or play through the Internet.
Gaming over the Internet in Russia is prohibited, all Russian online institutions are in the status of illegal business. However, the Russian government is currently considering a project to legalize online poker.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, poker in Russia already existed, but it was not as popular as it is today. Most often, poker could be played in private apartments in which an illegal underground amateur club was organized, and only people who were in a certain circle could receive an invitation to a private poker party.
The main peak of the popularity of poker was in the two thousandth year.
The first poker school was opened in 2001, and the Internet began to be filled with many video tutorials. The knowledge and different strategies of playing poker have become available to most who have access to the Internet. All this generated an increased interest in poker, the first professionals began to appear.
In 2006, Dmitry Lesnoy was led by the first Russian poker Federation, which at that time was equated to a sports game, and in 2007 it was officially recognized as a sports discipline. The Federation’s task was to promote the game to the masses and regulate poker clubs.
Until 2009, poker flourished as a sports game; not a single law prevented its spread to the masses. But in 2009, everything changed. The status of a sports game was taken away from poker and it was given the status of a gamble. Poker was banned from live games in territories not intended for games, as well as on the Internet. Accordingly, to play poker, to play, they had to go to a specially designated gaming zone.
However, in the same 2009, our athlete at the world poker championship takes second place and brings home a prize - about six million dollars.
Winning a Russian pokerman gives rise to a marketing move on the part of PokerStars, and they are actively starting to launch advertising campaigns in order to attract interest in the legal poker zone "Azov City".
Alas, these campaigns were unsuccessful due to the location of gambling zones. In fact, the casinos were on bare fields, and no one wanted to go there. Visitors to the casinos where poker games were held were local Rostov game lovers.
Gambling: criminal liability
On July 26, 2011, a law was passed that provides for administrative punishment. Now, any use of gaming equipment or information and telecommunication networks outside a specially designated area is equated to a violation of the law. Responsibility for the gambling business provides for a fine, imprisonment of up to three years, correctional labor, depending on the scale of illegally obtained profit.
Business organization
Organization of a gambling business until 2006 was considered promising and profitable. Even a small room with several slot machines was crowded with willing players and brought the owner a large daily income.
But after the enactment of the ban on casinos and slot machines, everything changed.Some left, others came in their place, for a holy place is never empty. Instead of casinos and slot machines, bookmakers and lottery players began to appear, with which they also began to actively fight with time.
The idea of the government was simple - to save people from the addiction to the game. Already then, according to research centers, the picture was unfavorable, a record number of the country's inhabitants fell ill with gambling addiction.
How many gaming zones started working after the bill
Of the allocated gaming zones, only one was able to quickly open, which is located in the Krasnodar Territory. The rest remained just grandiose projects to open Russian Las Vegas.
But even in Krasnodar, not everyone was in a hurry to go play. The owners of the gambling business suffered great losses. As a result, they, infringed and crushed by the legal framework, opened illegal establishments that disguised themselves as anything but a casino: from a harmless Internet cafe to strip clubs.
The bookmakers flourished at one time, but the law began to crush them, so they went underground.
Constant raids, confiscation of gaming equipment, huge fines, imprisonment - all this led to the fact that many gambling business owners went online, coming up with illegal schemes with offshore, in which it was difficult to track them.
The authorities responded by blocking gambling sites, so the owners of the gambling business were defeated again.
Today, in order to organize a gambling business, an entrepreneur must register as a legal entity, after which he must submit an application to the tax service and obtain permission to conduct gambling in a specially designated area.
Legalization of business: lotteries
The legalization of the gambling business in Russia took place under the guise of the state lottery and in disputes of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economy.
The Ministry of Economy considered that the measures taken would replenish the Russian budget, and the Ministry of Finance hesitated and suggested: this decision will lead to an uncontrolled growth of illegal Internet establishments with analog automatic machines for selling state tickets, the business, as always, will get out of state control.
Currently, the law on state lotteries is at the stage of heated discussions around the degree of control of the lottery market.
Some deputies suggest loosening control and allowing the sale of electronic lottery tickets every five minutes via the Internet and in special terminals dispersed throughout the cities.
Another part of the deputies is skeptical about the proposal for state lotteries and argues that this type of activity is no different from one-armed bandits and ordinary slot machines. Deputies recall how in 2006 they cleared Moscow and St. Petersburg from them, after which they fought against illegal, underground establishments for several more years.
Legalization of the game in Crimea
Recently, the Council of the Russian Federation approved the Crimea and Sochi as a gambling zone. The parliamentarian believes that if Crimea is made into a gaming zone, additional investments will be attracted, jobs will be created, the flow of tourists wishing to combine leisure with the game will increase, and thus, the regional budget will be replenished with all the funds raised.
