An open list of organizers, effective punishments and revocation of permission: a lawyer’s opinion on the renewal of the lottery business in Ukraine.

A lawyer on restarting the lottery market in Ukraine

For a long time, the Ukrainian lottery sector functioned according to the principle: “Let’s try to do something.” But now comes PlayCity, a new regulatory body under the control of the Ministry of Digital Transformation. And if you think it’s just a simple rebrand, it’s not. Danylo Vinnik, a lawyer in the field of international corporate law and fintech, informed the Informer about this.

It seems that someone has decided to finally give lotteries a face that is “not ashamed to show investors”. Open tender — now not only players have the opportunity to win.

“The regulator assures that it will issue licenses through a transparent competition, without a “randomizer” in the form of acquaintances or a magical telephone right. Therefore, now those who meet the conditions will really have a chance to get a license, and not those who “guessed the number that the ministry intended”. automatically, “we’re not finished here” It seems that the “cash registers” from Diya.City are also turned off. Now it is necessary to choose something – either the gym or the pizza at 23:00 – the “seriously” mode is activated operators, real fines and the possibility of depriving the license. So, it is allowed to play “according to the rules”. As a result, the lottery market is being prepared for a general clean-up and exit from the shadows. For the first time in a long time, we will see a civilized sector, where everything works as it is fixed in the regulation, “said the lawyer.

Restarting the lottery market for the first time in more than 12 years — the Government adopted a resolution The Cabinet of Ministers approved updated rules for the lottery sector. This decision returns to the legal field the industry, which for more than 12 years functioned in the “gray” zone – lottery operators did not pay license fees, and the payment of taxes was not monitored at all. This business was actually outside of state regulation due to significant lobbying by operators. This created opportunities for abuse, from disguising gambling as lotteries to selling unaccounted gray tickets. Over the years, the state budget has not received billions of hryvnias. Acceptance of license conditions fixes this — lotteries are back in the legal field. Each operator will pay 22.4 million hryvnias — that’s more than 67 million hryvnias every year only from license fees.

From now on, licenses for holding lotteries will be granted exclusively based on the results of a transparent competition. All operators will keep records using an electronic bet acceptance system, which will enable the state to monitor sales and payouts in real time. Each ticket and terminal will receive a unique QR code, which will allow to establish the point of sale and confirm the legality of the equipment. The approval of license conditions is only the initial stage of the reform of the lottery sector. The next stage is amendments to the Law “On State Lotteries”, which contains a significant number of shortcomings. The current version provides almost no grounds for conducting inspections and holding companies accountable for detected violations, including revoking their license. Therefore, the three existing operators can operate for another 10 years, as it is currently provided for in the law, without real control. That is why the license conditions were adopted for the period of martial law +1 year from the day of its end, but not less than 3 years. This gives time to improve the legislation.

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