Earlier this month, Russia’s Interior Ministry reported uncovering a network of 10 illegal gambling clubs in Moscow, each of which earned a daily take of around 100k rubles (US $3k). Police seized 300 gambling machines and computers equipped with gambling software as well as 5m rubles ($150k) in cash.The RAPSI news agency quoted police saying the ring was set up by immigrants from Georgia and Udmurtia and was “managed remotely.”
It’s unclear whether the busts were related to the recently announced arrest of the deputy head of a Moscow police district suspected of covering up illegal gambling operations. Moscow’s police have a complicated relationship with gambling, vividly illustrated by the internecine squabbling that broke out in 2011 between various levels of the Interior Ministry accusing each other of covering for illegal gambling operators, only to have the Supreme Court say ‘you kids are driving me crazy’ and dismissing everything late last year on the grounds that the arrests were illegal because the officers forgot to say ‘Putin says.’
Russian authorities have now shut down a total of 61k illegal gambling joints since the 2009 passage of a law restricting casinos to four far-flung regions of the country. The Prosecutor General’s Office issued a statement Wednesday trumpeting the fact that the casino closures have resulted in operators being fined 602m rubles, which works out to a paltry $17.1m, for an average fine of around $280 per incident, about what would pay for a speeding ticket in most western countries.
However, police have also confiscated a hefty 796k slot machines and other pieces of gaming gear, which must be music to the ears of gaming device makers, because those machines aren’t going to replace themselves. And replaced they will be, as even police say the number of casinos they’ve had to shut – up 2k since they last reported the figures in December – graphically illustrates the 2009 law’s abject failure in curbing Russians’ appetite for gambling.
