In Irkutsk, police raided the elite underground casino Enthusiast, seizing dozens of patrons, safes with chips, and hard drives with game recordings. The report shows law enforcement stepping up the fight against illegal gambling, but seized equipment often returns to owners, and organizers are often punished too lightly. In the Enthusiast case, owners may face a more serious charge for operating in a building not yet commissioned.

Last week brought another small but significant victory in the active efforts of the police in the fight against the illegal organization of gambling on the territory of the Russian Federation. This time it happened in Irkutsk, and it concerns the elite casino called “Enthusiast,” where the city’s respected and wealthy people liked to spend their leisure time. The events unfolded like in Hollywood films, with the use of special police units and additional equipment.
Law enforcement officers in the region have taken the eradication of the gambling business in their area seriously, as official statistics at least show. Thus, during the first half of the year, 17 raids were carried out on establishments suspected of illegal activity, but in just a couple of months of the second half of the year, there have already been 12 such inspections of gambling houses. And this is far from the limit.
During the operations organized by the police, just over four hundred “one-armed bandits” were seized, which, unfortunately, cannot not only be destroyed, but in the near future may again become the property of the people from whom they were confiscated. What causes this state of affairs, and how to deal with it, no one knows, not even the police officers.
A video of the operation, made during the assault on the “Enthusiast” casino, may help shed a little light on what is happening. And so an image appears on the computer, from which it can be seen that the police arrived at the specified establishment and are trying to get inside.
At first everything happens peacefully, the police leadership tries to negotiate with the people inside the premises who do not want to let the police officers in. After another unsuccessful attempt to influence the casino representatives verbally, a policeman signals to a huge OMON officer, who, with a sledgehammer in his hands, heads toward the door blocking the way into the establishment.
With three powerful two-handed blows, the policeman removes the obstacle from the path of the law enforcement officers, breaking both the plastic frame of the entrance door and the glass elements of the frame. But not everything is as simple as it seemed. Behind the plastic door there was a long corridor, which separated the first door from another one, but this time more massive and seemingly impregnable. But the heated-up OMON fighter throws himself at this door as well, smashing it with a single powerful blow of the sledgehammer. That’s it, the police are inside …
Entering the premises, the law enforcement officers find themselves in semi-darkness, and the video camera switches to night mode. Casino visitors flash by, and the officers force them to the floor, pulling their arms behind their backs or placing them behind their heads. There are about thirty guests in the establishment, among them a blonde woman trying to get up and see what is happening. But she quickly gives up the idea.
Everyone knows that the “Enthusiast” casino was the most popular, the most elite establishment in the city. Both wealthy city residents and guests from the People’s Republic of China, who have their business in Irkutsk, played here. Considering that the Chinese are one of the most gambling nations on earth, the income of the underground casino grew very quickly, because the inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom paid for their losses with all their property, consisting of housing, vehicles, and luxury items. According to unconfirmed information, quite recently one of the casino’s clients lost more than five million rubles here, which, you will agree, is not little.
After processing the casino clients without deposits, the police begin examining the contents of several safes located in the premises. There are chips there whose total value, by casino standards, amounts to tens of millions. The black bags stored in the safe are stuffed to the brim with chips with denominations of 500 rubles or 5000 rubles.
Having dealt with the chips, the police officers begin searching the premises and very quickly find serious evidence against the casino under the suspended ceiling of the establishment, namely hard drives from the security service computers, which, as it later turned out, contain video recordings of the gaming sessions of many “Enthusiast” visitors. The clients themselves, knowing about these recordings, deny that they played gambling games in the premises, justifying their presence in the storage area by playing billiards. But under the current legislation, no charges can be brought against citizens who visit such establishments. Therefore, all the clients, after a brief and almost formal questioning, were released.
The equipment seized from the gambling establishment was placed in an evidence storage facility. It will remain there until the court decides its future fate. In the best-case scenario for the police, the court ruling will order the gaming equipment destroyed, although in practice such cases have been very rare.
In most cases, the property of underground casino owners is returned to them. This is shown by police statistics, according to which, in just the past half-year, it was possible to temporarily shut down seventeen gambling establishments, from which 201 “one-armed bandits” were seized. But over the course of an entire year of fighting illegal gambling business, only 50 such devices were destroyed.
Already in the 2 months of the next half-year, police officers carried out another 12 raids, the result of which was the confiscation of another 211 “one-armed bandits,” as well as several American roulette tables and poker tables. The court cases involving these items have not yet been completed, so their fate is unclear. But the police are very pessimistic about the chances of this equipment being destroyed.
The fact is that all these items, with the help of which illegal activity was carried out, may soon return to their former owners again, and such cases happen quite often. For this to happen, the former owners only need to prove that they were not engaged in gambling business, but were merely amusing themselves for their own pleasure.
It is no secret that casino owners know how to find ways to avoid criminal liability. Thus, without violating current legislation, anyone can place a “one-armed bandit” in their home and play for their own pleasure, even for money, after first putting it into the machine. And casino owners can easily reduce the matter to the claim that the premises where the illegal activity was allegedly carried out are not gambling premises at all, but storage premises. All that is additionally needed for this is to cut off the power supply before the police arrive and hide or destroy information about financial activity.
In that case, the maximum punishment offenders can face is an administrative fine of 2,500 rubles at best, or even 500 rubles. Punishment in the form of long-term imprisonment has not yet been applied in practice even once. The problem for law enforcement agencies is that in order for the punishment to be as severe as possible, it is necessary to catch illegal activity involving a cash turnover of 1.5 million rubles. And since shadow businessmen are in no hurry to wait for the police to arrive and show them their financial statements, by the time the police get to them, they will have time to destroy any traces of the offenses.
But the Irkutsk casino will not get off so easily. Its owners are additionally charged with conducting activity in premises that have not been put into operation, which is a more serious accusation.