Russian prime minister signs off on new gambling region
News on 20 Aug 2016
News on 20 Aug 2016
Russia has a new legal gambling region in Krasnaya Polyana following the signed approval of a resolution by prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The activity will be centred in Sochi, a seaside resort and scene of a recent Olympics sports festival.
The Russian news agency TASS reports that the resolution was signed August 10 and has been published on the Russian government’s information website.
The gambling zone will cover 165,000 square meters of the land plots that were earlier allocated for the facilities of the 2014 Winter Olympics but where the construction was not financed from the federal budget.
The law allowing the creation of a gambling zone in Sochi was adopted in 2014 and allows the region to use Olympic facilities, the construction of which was financed by private investors as facilities of the gambling zone in the Krasnodar region.
The creation of the gambling zone is reportedly the brainchild of Russia’ largest savings bank Sberbank German Gref, which initiated the idea of a gambling zone in Sochi. Sberbank controls the Krasnaya Polyana company, which built the Gonraya Karusel mountain ski resort in the region.
The ban on gambling in Russia (except bookmaking offices and betting terminals) outside specially assigned territories came into force on July 1, 2009.
Other gambling zones include the Altai Territory in West Siberia, the Krasnodar Territory in southern Russia, the Primorye Territory in the Far East and the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad.
