The fight against illegal gambling is one of the most important tasks of the authorities to be performed in order to develop the legal gambling market in Ukraine.
Therefore, I would like to remind you once again that there are three main categories of participants in the black market:
online organisers whose activities are concentrated on the Internet and whose websites are sometimes quite skilfully disguised as legitimate ones;
offline gambling organisers that do not have appropriate licences and operate under agreements with corrupt officials;
lottery operators who have been imitating gambling since the legal ban on the legal gambling market in 2009-2020.
This year, the activity of law enforcement agencies in the fight against illegal gambling has increased significantly. In particular, 600 illegal online casino websites have been blocked since the beginning of the year.
As Artem Boyarenko, prosecutor of the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, noted during the United News telethon, 450 criminal proceedings are currently under investigation for illegal activities related to the organisation or conduct of gambling and lotteries. He also noted that illegal online casinos affect not only the budget, which loses taxes, but also the players themselves, who are in no way immune to fraud in illegal gambling establishments.
It is very positive that the Office of the Prosecutor General drew attention to the non-financial risks of the black market, as until now, the vulnerability of players on illegal platforms to various fraudulent schemes, personal data theft, gambling addiction, etc. has been discussed mainly by industry experts.
In particular, from the very beginning of the reform of the domestic gambling market, representatives of the largest Ukrainian specialised association of legal gambling market organisers, the Ukrainian Gambling Council, have constantly emphasised the need for cooperation between business, the national regulator and law enforcement agencies in combating illegal gambling. For its part, the UGC provided monitoring information on the activity of illegal online sites to law enforcement agencies.
White business is not able to fight illegal gambling organisers on its own. It has neither the authority nor the resources to do so. Therefore, legal companies that conduct their business activities within the law really need government support. The fight against illegal businesses and entrepreneurs is an important part of it.
The state can provide this support not only by using the resources of the law enforcement system, but also by conducting regular inspections of suspicious businesses by fiscal authorities, taking measures to prevent illegal activities, providing legal support to combat illegal enterprises, etc. Such measures help create a competitive environment for legal businesses and contribute to the development of the country's economy.
Everyone benefits from such work by government agencies: the state, legal businesses, and consumers of services. And in times of war, it is also a way to improve the country's security.
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