Gambling business to replenish the budget of Ukraine

The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine developed a draft law on the legalization of slot machines, casino, bookmaker business and lotteries, Joinfo.ua reports with reference to the Ministry’s website.

“The organizer of gambling can be a legal entity with a registered capital of not less than €2 million,” – noted the representatives of the Ministry of Finance, adding that only entities that, at the time of submission of the application have carried out the lottery for at least five years and had total financial turnover not less than 3 billion euros can become an organizer of gambling in Ukraine. Also, they must have had gambling business in at least three foreign countries.

According to the draft law, the yearly license for the casino will cost €300,000 in the cities with population of less than 500,000 people, €600,000 – with a population of over 500,000, €1 million in Kyiv, €1.5 million for online casino.

It should be recalled that gambling business has been banned in Ukraine from July 25, 2009. The initiator of the ban was Yulia Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister of Ukraine at that time. The reason for this decision was the tragedy of May 7, 2009 in Dnipropetrovsk in the salon of slot machines, when a sudden fire killed 9 people.

As stated in the Law “On prohibition of gambling business in Ukraine” of July 25, 2009, “the development of the gambling business is accompanied by the growth of population with infantile values: the hope for luck frees a person from responsibility for one’s actions, the need to take socially mature and responsible decisions … not less than 75% players in the salons of vending machines are students and schoolchildren, in cities with a population of half a million people – 5% are addicted to gambling; every fourth loser thinks of suicide. ”

Also, the Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said this summer about the need to return the legal gambling to Ukraine.