Switzerland to block illegal gambling sites
The parliament voted to block online access to games that are not allowed in Switzerland.
Switzerland.- The House of Representatives of Switzerland decided yesterday that only local residents are allowed to receive an online license. Despite the fact that they voted to make it possible, some politicians believe that the blocking is not democratic.
Thierry Burkart, an official from the centre-right Radical Party, said: “Blocking websites works, experience abroad demonstrates that.” According to SwissInfo, only the rightwing People’s Party and the leftwing Greens political party showed concerns about the bill and expressed their resistance. People’s Party politician Franz Grütter said that blocking is not on step with the liberal, democratic way of thinking. “It’s what dictatorships do,” he said.
Back in January, Swiss land-based casinos had requested the government to block the domains (IP) of authorised international iGaming platforms. However, the Legal Affairs Committee of the Swiss National Council decided to remove this condition from the regulation on the online gaming industry. The Committee objected the blocking request, but enabled the Federal Gaming Commission to control the international gaming sector.
The Senate still has to decide how to tax winnings: the original plan is to maintain all winnings from lotteries and sporting bets tax-free up to almost a million dollars. Both the House of Representatives and the cabinet expressed their intentions to keep all the winnings from gambling tax-free. Switzerland is set to continue the debate on the gambling law on March 15.
