Ukraine has tightened up the leaky tap that was allowing some online gambling to continue to operate unregulated. According to GamblingCompliance, the Verkhovna Rada closed a loophole late last week that was allowing sites to locate servers outside the country and escape prosecution under Ukrainian law. It means that the definition of banned activities includes operators that have located back-end hardware outside the country and also covers payments taken in relation to gambling.
The legislation was first put forward last year and will now also give police more power to make arrests as well as everything else. It was announced in December that a state monopoly would run online gaming activities in the country and any private operators must go through a National Gambling Organizer (NGO). The European Union has little control as Ukraine is not a member and this is a country that’s allowing tours of an abandoned nuclear facility over online gaming so we give up. If we wanted 15 toes we’d have got prosthetics!
In the same country, land-based casinos are also unlikely to be returning anytime soon. Drafted in September, there was a flicker of hope that the ministry of finance bill to allow casino gambling would make it through the cabinet of ministers. Six months later there is no word on the bill and no one really knows where it is.
Pavlo Byeloslov, a lawyer with Vasil Kisil & Partners, told GamblingCompliance, “It seems that the ministry of finance’s bill is no longer on the government’s priority list. It was a very important decision taken by the cabinet of ministers, to say that this bill would be separate from the preparations for the Euro 2012.”
It had been thought that a push for the legalization of land-based casinos would happen in preparation for an influx of visitors for Euro 2012. This hasn’t happened yet and time is running out before the tournament begins this time next year.
