There Is No Gambling in Russia?

According to Russian legislation, a new era without gambling started in 2009. But one can see that plenty of casinos, lottery drums and even lottery scams remain the same under new names. And authorities restrict access to information on gambling industry inspections.

Gambling-houses appeared in Europe in the XIII century, first prohibitions of them – just a bit later. In Russia, even chess were for some time considered as gambling. In 2000s, the number of various gambling-houses in our country exceeded any reasonable limits, and the government once more decided to fight gamble-fever.

According to the Federal Law No. 244-FZ from December 29, 2006 (came into force on July 1, 2009), gambling-hoses were permitted to work only in several special “gambling areas”: Kaliningrad Oblast, Primorsky Territory, Altai Territory, and one more area covering part of Krasnodar Territory and Rostov Oblast.

Really, most gambling-houses appear to continue functioning, only with new names and ads.

In summer 2010, IIFD lawyers filed a request to the Federal Taxation Service Department for St.-Petersburg (the government body inspecting law observance by gambling businesses) asking for the following information:

• how many inspections in the gambling field were held in St.-Petersburg in 2009 and first half of 2010;
• how many law violation facts were detected;
• how many decisions on the imposition of administrative sanctions were made after inspections.

Officials refused to provide information, referring to a certain Procedure for Access to Confidential(!) Data.
On January 31, the Kuibyshevsky district court of St.-Petersburg will examine our claim against this refusal.

Meanwhile, the Federal Taxation Service Department for Krasnoyarsk Territory published full information on inspection results at its official website on July 15, 2010. So did the Federal Taxation Service Department for Tambov Oblast. Is one Russian region’s meat another region’s poison?

Daria Sukhikh, IIFD senior lawyer: “Hiding information on inspecting gambling businesses makes to suspect that there is something wrong. I believe many people in St.-Petersburg are worried about plenty of so-called Internet-clubs that are really gambling-houses. Hiding information makes the public not able to control how government bodies prevent and stop illegal gambling”.

Full information on the case (in Russian) is available in the IIFD Court Practice Register.