Today in Russia the deadline for casinos and slot halls outside the four designated gambling zones expires, after which their owners face liability for illegal business. However, in practice many large venues have already closed, and some businesses are trying to go underground, rebranding as entertainment centers or underground salons. In Irkutsk region police continue fighting illegal machines, but proving violations and securing real punishment remains extremely difficult.

In Russia, today is the last day for casinos and slot machine halls to operate outside the four gambling zones established by law. According to experts, many large establishments have already ceased operations, and the last ones will close by 10-11 p.m. After that, owners of gambling establishments outside the gambling zones will face administrative and even criminal liability for illegal business activity.
The creation of four special territories in Russia for gambling began in December 2006 after the relevant law was signed by Vladimir Putin. In December 2007, the State Duma adopted the law “On State Regulation and Activities for the Organization and Conduct of Gambling.” Under this document, by July 1, 2009, all casinos and gambling clubs were to be relocated to four special gambling zones — in the Altai and Primorsky territories, the Kaliningrad region, and also on the border of the Rostov region and Krasnodar territory. However, practice has shown that none of the four zones is ready at present.
At the same time, the total cost of the gambling zone projects submitted to the Finance Ministry by the administrations of four Russian regions amounted to 727.5 billion rubles. According to the submitted projects, 101 billion rubles should be allocated from the federal budget, while the rest is to come from regional authorities and investors.
According to experts, the largest casinos do not even intend to move to the gambling zones, but will be repurposed as entertainment centers and sports poker clubs. Owners of small chains of slot machine halls are also counting on new technologies that formally do not fall under the requirements of the law.
It has already been 2 years since gambling was banned in the Irkutsk region by a regional law. At first, the law was not enforced — it was impossible to punish the owners of the establishments.
But soon fines appeared: for an official they amounted to 30,000-40,000 rubles, for a legal entity — 600,000-800,000. And these measures did not work. The owners of the parlors simply stopped registering their activities, since they were illegal anyway. Therefore, now the courts, guided by the Code of Administrative Offenses, usually fine violators of the ban 500 rubles, and any gaming parlor can earn that amount in 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, owners of illegal parlors are becoming increasingly inventive.
Underground parlors install surveillance cameras and issue special “guest cards” that allow regular customers to enter. If police officers still manage to get inside the establishment, the entire parlor can be cut off from power at the push of a button. And if the machines were not working, then nothing can be proven.
Knowing that the machines may be seized, owners of underground parlors bring them into basement rooms through windows and then weld grates over those windows. Law enforcement officers arrive in a truck to take away the “one-armed bandits,” but they do not fit through the doors. In such cases, the circuit boards have to be removed from the machines and the keys taken away.
- In reality, the owners of gambling establishments can only be punished for illegal business activity. But this fact must be proven: money must be found in the bill acceptors of the machines or records of income in the logbook, - says Dmitry Yamyshkov, acting head of the consumer market department of the Center for Combating Offenses in the Consumer Market and Enforcing Administrative Legislation under the Main Directorate of Internal Affairs for the Irkutsk region. - This is not at all easy. So far, only one criminal case has been opened. An investigation is underway.
Even after the federal law comes into force, little is likely to change, but there is still some hope.
Since the beginning of this year, police officers have inspected about 50 gambling establishments in Irkutsk. During this time, 181 slot machines, 572 microchips and the same number of keys to the “one-armed bandits,” as well as 630 casino chips, were seized. The further fate of these machines and their owners is being decided by the court. Fines imposed during this period totaled only 34,500 rubles. In addition, almost all of the machines, boards, keys, and other items were returned to their owners.
The other day, district police officers shut down an underground slot machine parlor that was operating in the city center on Karl Marx Street. By the way, it had existed there for a long time: first legally under the sign of a casino, and then without a sign and with an entrance from the courtyard. When the police entered the building, they were stunned by the scale of the illegal establishment — 3 floors, about 500 square meters of space, where, in addition to slot machines, there were rest rooms and a bar.
Notably, the owners of the establishment paid 300,000 rubles a month just for rent. And no wonder — the daily revenue of the illegal establishment was presumably several hundred thousand rubles. Interestingly, a plainclothes police officer, while carrying out an assignment, lost 2,500 rubles to a machine. The banknotes were marked, and this fact will form the basis of the evidence. Fifty machines were also removed from the parlor. Perhaps this time the police will be able to prove that the owners of the gambling establishment were engaged in illegal business activity.