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Chile – New guidelines in Chile to define gambling machines

By - 6 January 2017

The Office of the Comptroller General of Chile has issued a statement clarifying the procedure for the municipal governments when it comes to defining when machines should be classed as gambling machines in so called ‘neighbourhood casinos.’

The new guidelines indicate that the municipalities should ask those interested in obtaining permission to operate electronic gaming machines, to obtain a report from the gambling Control Board (SJC) stating that prizes are not handed out randomly by the electronic machines on their premises.

The new rules give the SJC the right to determine what constitutes random and what constitutes entertainment machines and state that only certifications issued by gaming laboratories approved by the SJC will have the capacity to verify conclusively if a machine is either a gambling machine or if the result depends on an element of skill. The new ruling issued by the Comptroller General was issued at the request of the SJC, and in the case that the body establishes that the result of the machine in question depends on chance, then the municipality will not be permitted to grant the machine permission to operate. From this point onwards the Office of the Comptroller General now considers that municipal governments must follow the new guidelines as the only guide when it comes to how they define gambling and non gambling machines in their respective jurisdictions.

The decision comes after the SJC released the results of its first ever survey into gaming machines operating outside of casinos in July. The wide ranging study, which was carried out on behalf of the SJC by the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies at The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, revealed that there are now more than 33 thousand machines operating illegally in Chile. The results of the study were delivered to the 88 respective municipalities where these machines were found to be operating so that appropriate measures could be taken to prevent the growth of illegal gambling.

As part of the study researchers visited more than 3,000 businesses which had been granted a municipal licence to run gaming arcades and found that 1,327 of them housed machines that handed out cash prizes – something which is in direct contravention of Chile’s gaming laws, as according to federal law, slot machines may only be present in casinos. The results of the study were distributed to the municipal governments in question, the Undersecretary of Regional Development and the Comptroller General of Chile so they could carry out appropriate action on the issue.

According to Chilean gaming law of 1995 slot machines outside of casinos are strictly prohibited. The law clearly states that slot machines may only be operated in the seven municipal casinos in Chile as well as the other privately run casinos throughout the nation. Furthermore, The SJC has exclusive powers to award, reject, renew and revoke operating permits for casinos in the country and licenses for gambling and associated services.

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