Legislation
SJC leads session on illegal gambling in Valparaíso region
By James - 1 April 2024
The Superintendence of Casino Games (SCJ) held a training session on illegal gambling in Chile leading an in-person session with officials from various levels of the government in the Valparaíso region, aimed at preventing unauthorized slot machines.
The event was attended by public officials, Carabineros (the Chilean national law enforcement gendarmerie) and the Investigations Police of the Valparaíso Region. They all received information on the requirements for the qualification of electronic gaming machines, prior to the granting or renewal of a municipal license.
During the meeting, the SCJ trained over 40 individuals on illegal gambling in Chile. The SJC reiterated the ‘prohibition of authorizing the commercial exploitation of gambling machines, as it is an activity that can only be carried out in legally established casinos.’
“It is important that we have been trained on gambling and casino issues because the law is clear; all casinos that are not within the casino law are illegal. That is to say, all the casinos in the Province of Quillota are illegal, and all this was made very clear in the training where all the necessary information was provided to follow the procedures and be able to generate closures,” said José Raúl Orrego Ramírez, presidential provincial delegate of the Province of Quillota.
The Head of the Legal Division of the SCJ, Manuel Zárate Campos, urged municipalities to work together on the issue.
“We have been working for several years because of the ruling that establishes this obligation to request certain requirements from people who want to exploit electronic machines,” he said.
Gambling machines outside of casinos are banned under Chile’s gaming laws of 1995, but a large number of illegal slots are present in arcades. Local governments have allowed amusement arcades to operate in their jurisdictions, but they have not drawn a clear line between Skills with Prizes (SWP) machines and slot machines. Subsequently, a great many arcades house both.
In January 2017 the Office of the Comptroller General of Chile issued a statement clarifying the procedure for the municipal governments when it comes to defining when machines should be classed as gambling machines. The guidelines indicate that the municipalities should ask those interested in obtaining permission to operate electronic gaming machines, to obtain a report from the SJC stating that prizes are not handed out randomly by the electronic machines on their premises.
In May 2018 the Senate’s advisory Commission for Decentralisation and Regional Development unanimously approved a bill that sought to prohibit the operation of slots or games of chance outside of premises legally allowed to offer gaming. Then in June 2021 a bill to prohibit the use of slot machines outside of casinos in Chile was approved by the country’s Senate. However the situation remains essentially unchanged. Illegal slot machines are still a major issue in the gambling industry with as many as 70,000 illegal slot machines in the country according to some estimates.
