The Ministry seeks to adopt licensing conditions consistent with current law to give the government control tools and ensure competition. This will prevent what is essentially bookmaking from being disguised as lotteries, increase tax revenues and make the market more transparent, Denikeeva said.
“If you go to the websites of some “state lottery” operators, indeed, you can see products that can very loosely be called lotteries. They are much more similar to gambling with slots, to quasi-bookmaking. Operators like “M.S.L.” are formally not illegal, because they have a license. But in fact they maneuver in the “gray zone”, offering products that are more similar to bookmaking,” she noted.
According to Denikeeva, such formats of activity actually do not correspond to the field of lotteries, because this is “a different field – with a different license cost, different requirements, a different level of control and attention to the player.”
She emphasized that the state declares a policy to protect players and combat gambling addiction, but the PlayCity agency does not have tools to influence the lottery market until the licensing conditions have been approved and changes have been made to the law on lotteries.
“Where there should be lotteries, we see activities that are, in fact, closer to bookmaking,” summed up the representative of the Ministry of Digital Development.
Context
In October, journalist Sergei Lyamets said on Facebook that the legal company Jurimex, which was founded by MP and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy Danilo Getmantsev, has a common owner with the lottery operator M.S.L.
