Greece losing billions to illegal operators

Illegal betting operators are hoovering up Euro 5 billion a year in the Greek market, the newly appointed Greek Public Order Minister, Vassilis Kikilias, was told in a briefing in Athens Tuesday by the general secretary for transparency, Giorgos Sourlas.

Appealing for a major crackdown on unlicensed and illegal operators, Sourlas said their depredations were harming the national economy and acting as a mechanism for laundering ill-gotten gains.

The minister was told that the head of the Hellenic Gaming Commission, Evgenios Giannakopoulos, was introducing measures which should ensure that illegal operators were constrained or eliminated from the national market.

Giannakopoulos said recently that the legal market has seen turnover drop from Euros 8.7 billion in 2009 to 5.5 billion in 2013, posting a decline of about 35 percent. The same occurred in gross profits, which dropped from Euros 2.5 billion  in 2009 to 1.5 billion last year ( see previous reports).

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