Using some nuances of Ukrainian legislation, lottery operators imitate almost all types of gambling: from casinos and slot machines to bookmaking inclusive. She added that all this is implemented mainly online: on lottery websites you can find any gambling game and play it.
Zakrevskaya emphasized that since the legalization of gambling, almost everyone who dealt with the issue of taxation – from members of the parliamentary Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, participants of the Verkhovna Rada, officials of the Ministry of Finance to representatives of the media – paid attention only to the activities of licensed gambling organizers and ignored the work of lottery operators. Until recently, even law enforcement officers did not pay attention to the situation in the lottery sphere, but now gradual positive changes have begun.
“If it were not for the Economic Security Service, many would probably keep silent about the illegal activities of lottery operators in organizing gambling! Often, such “activities” remain unnoticed due to a lack of control or insufficient public awareness. And only the extreme activity of law enforcement forces the media and politicians to pay attention to the work of illegals,” Zakrevskaya noted.
According to the expert, one of the consequences of the steps taken by law enforcement officers should be the inclusion of bills on the agenda of parliamentarians that would return lotteries to the sphere of gambling. “If lottery operators are so eager to provide gambling services, then it is worthwhile to form all the legislative grounds for this and recognize the lottery as a game of chance. This will be fair, adequate and fully consistent with modern international experience and the practice of civilized countries. And the state budget will only benefit from such regulation of the economic activities of lottery operators,” she adds.
Recall that the Economic Security Service exposed two heads of state lotteries and announced their suspicion. According to investigators, they illegally organized and conducted gambling and bookmaking activities on the basis of lottery websites. In response to a request from the State Special Communications Service, the State Special Communications Service issued an order to suppliers of electronic communications services to block the domain names of the organizers of the national lotteries UNL and MSL.
“It was established that miscoding and P2P transfers were used to top up the balance of a gaming account in an illegal online casino (bookmaking activities and other gambling games). That is, the funds were credited in the form of a substitution of the payment purpose or a regular transfer between accounts of individuals instead of the replenishment to the account of a company with code 9406 – “state lotteries” as provided by law,” the State Special Communications Service claims. If you found this publication helpful and interesting, we recommend subscribing to our breaking gambling news to receive notifications about the latest updates and stay informed about current events.
