Legislation
Ukraine – Ukraine about to welcome back casinos and betting
By Phil - 7 December 2015
Ukraine has published a bill to legalise gambling in the country with draft legislation to regulate casinos, sports-betting and online gaming, being posted on the website of the Ministry of Finance.
Gambling in Ukraine has been banned since July 25, 2009. Yulia Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister of Ukraine at that time decided to ban casino games in the country after the tragedy of May 7, 2009 when a sudden fire killed nine people in the salon of slot machines in Dnipropetrovsk.
The Ministry has proposed the creation of a National regulator to organise and control gambling in the country and issue licences to gaming firms. The bill dictates that Ukrainian companies with statuory capital of over €2m, can apply for a licence. The cost of a one-year land-based casino licence would sit between €300,000 and €1m with an online casino licence costing €1.5m. A single lottery operator would be created, with that licence issued via a tender process. Bookmakers would have to contend with serious restrictions concerning the place where their business is operated in terms of location. What is more, they would be forced to acquire two licenses, the first a bookmakers license at €1.5m per annum and the second for each shop paid from € 1,500 to 3,000 each. Online sportsbook will be available under the license.
Ukraine’s economy is currently languishing in response to the country’s conflict with Russia, but officials hope that after the Minsk Agreement it can now be brought back to life. While the foreign assistance Ukraine presently receives is appreciated, the country needs to quickly organise the recovery of its private sector. To do this requires three initiatives, being (1) identifying sectors where significant economic growth is presently feasible and facilitating foreign, as well as domestic, investment in these sectors, (2) providing for political risk insurance for such investment, and (3) better rule of law protection for investment in Ukraine, principally by creating a legal ombudsman to stop abuses of law and allow investors to feel much more secure legally.
In addition to direct tourism, it is hoped that cities such as Odessa should, like Batumi in Georgia, Varna in Bulgaria and Constanta in Romania, seek to attract the international cruise line industry. To accommodate such increased tourism, hotels and resorts need to be built and regulated gaming can help finance such hotel and resort development, as Batumi, Georgia, has done.
The Ministry of Finance believes that gaming can serve as a mechanism for increasing by UAH 1bn (US$42.2m) the revenues from state lotteries and gambling in 2016. The documents were published on November 30, 2015. According to the Ministry of Finance the bill will be a single document regulating gambling in Ukraine. The office documents also mentions plans to launch an electronic monitoring system that “will provide control in real time over the activities in the field of gaming, registering winnings, payments made and returns to players.”
