Telecom operators can punish for servicing online casinos

The fight against illegal casinos and bookmakers is expanding. The state apparently decided to get down to business seriously and cut off any channels for transferring funds from the casino mafia.

After the law “On state regulation of activities for the organization and conduct of gambling” came into force, which explicitly prohibits the organization of gambling business in Russia outside special gambling zones or on the Internet, the state authorities took a number of steps designed to clear the market and legalize the field of leisure for gamblers. And the last steps seem the most important. After all, they are designed to cut off illegal immigration channels of funds. And for the first time, they decided to bring in seemingly superlegal operators and their stores.

The other day, MP Kurbanov did not like the service of illegal online casinos and bookmakers by mobile operators and retailers: it turned out (although many people have known this for a long time) that you can pay for their services in almost any shop like “Svyaznoy” or “Euroset”. The same can be done using a mobile account.
')
Naturally, the defendants became alarmed and began to transfer arrows to banks and payment systems. They called themselves intermediaries and stated that they did not see the final beneficiaries. Interestingly, the article RNS cites the words of representatives of MegaFon and VimpelCom, and for some reason there is no comment from MTS, which has a subsidiary MTS bank.

Some payment services, by the way, have already been in the registry of banned sites, have not yet heard anything about the prosecution of banks, but it is possible that the “witch hunt” is not far off, especially considering the current policy of the Central Bank.

The article "Soviet Sport" provides the following data of the Federal Tax Service regarding the structure of the Russian sports betting market:

• 17.0% - Fonbet
• 13.4% - BaltBet
• 12.1% - 1xbet
• 11.1% - Bingo Boom
• 9.0% - Betting League
• 7.8% - Zenith
• 7.0% - UnionBet
• 5.6% - Evromir
• 17.0% - Other

So, for legal, registered in TsUPIS, online offices, of which there are only three - “1hstavka”, “League of Stakes” and “888.ru” - there are less than 1/5 of the financial flows in the Russian betting. Let me remind you that only TSUPIS (Online Betting Accounting Center) allows online casinos and bookmakers to legally accept bets.

Especially surprised by the lack of a license from the leader of the list - the company Fonbet. I was sure that she was the sponsor of our first football division and constantly flashed in advertising. It turned out that everything is not so simple: there is a legal offline office "Fonbet", but there is not having a license Fonbet, registered somewhere near the devil on horns. I did not understand whether the owners of Fonbet left it or someone uses their name for promotional purposes, but the situation is very strange (by the way, what will FAS say about this?).

I have not yet seen in the news information about the response of the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor to Deputy Kurbanov, but I intuitively feel that this time the matter will not be limited to blocking a couple of sites. In the United States, by the way, the heads of large online casinos have been sitting for several years now; I do not rule out that our authorities will adopt such a method.

In the same States, the local Federal Tax Service - the IRS is a very powerful body, it was they, and not the FBI, who were able to seat Al Capone. If some underground business had annually stolen $ 200 million from the budget (an approximate figure), then it would be not the websites that would fly, but the heads.

But the most obvious development of the situation seems to me to be the emergence of a law that adequately regulates online gambling. By the way, experts also speak about this. In general, the completion of the “golden age” of online casinos and betting shops.