If someone asked about the failure of the gambling business in Ukraine
24.10.2021   //  

Commentary of the editor of “Our groshi” Yuri Nikolov.

– What kind of problems do you see with the legalization? How can it turn the business into a black hole again?

– Boris Baum, Kirill Timoshenko, Andrey Motovilovets, Andrey Astapov initially programmed the operation of the gambling business according to this model: casinos and slot machines begin to work, but for at least two years an electronic system for controlling rates and money flows in gambling establishments will simply not exist. Thus, conditions were created for the shadow circulation of money. And so it happened in the end. According to the head of the parliamentary committee on finance and taxes Danil Getmantsev https://www.facebook.com/danil.getmantsev/posts/5992655730809719  for the first half of 2021, the total amount of taxes transferred to the state budget from licensees in the field of gambling business (excluding lotteries ) amounted to only 3.13 million hryvnia. This is about 100 thousand euros. And this is in a country with a population of about 40 million people. And it has already issued 67 licenses for the organization of gambling.

In the course of legalization, Volodymyr Zelensky said personally that he was reducing the number of stars for hotels wishing to open a slot machine hall. If at first it was planned 4, then along the way they allowed 3. As a result, this led to the spread of the game in small settlements. Plus a corrupt police force allows illegal salons to function. From it has become much less than before legalization. But they still stayed. And this is killing the opportunity for a big gambling business to come to Ukraine. After all, if a “white” business that pays taxes will have a tax-free gaming salon next to it, this will kill the profitability and the raison d’être of a legal casino.

All this is very well felt by foreign market players, and for two years, while the process of “legalization” lasts, no one has entered Ukraine. All licenses now are Ukrainian and Russian-related companies.

That is, in fact, we have already got a black hole. There is already an extensive network of gambling points in Ukraine, but the budget receives practically nothing from them.