Surplus of slots in Russia

Back in 2009, Russia’s latter-day czar Vladimir Putin signed a decree banishing all gambling from Russia’s cities and resorts to just four remote regions – Krasnoda-Rostov, which is currently operational, and three other regions in Kaliningrad, Altai and Primorye which are not (see previous reports).

The cost to businesses of the enforcement of Putin’s decree was revealed this week when the Prosecutor General’s Office revealed that over the past five years around a million physical slot machines have been seized from operators disregarding the decree, following police visits to over 100,000 venues.

That resulted in the shutdowns of 70,000 “illegal gambling facilities” and 812 unlawful casinos and the imposition of around 684 million rubles ($18.5 million) in fines.

Putin recently added to the list of acceptable gambling regions by including Sochi and Russia’s recently annexed Crimea regions.

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