Ukraine president wants to legalise gambling
The President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky has vowed to legalise gambling in order to boost tourism in the territory.
Ukraine.- Ukraine is seeking new ways to boost tourism, and President Vladimir Zelensky is reportedly interested in turning to gambling to do so. Gambling has been outlawed in the country since 2009, but the president wants to legalise it to generate revenue.
Zelensky said on Thursday that he intends to legalise casinos in five-star hotels. “We will legalise gambling, particularly casinos’ operation in five-star hotels. This [step] will stimulate the development of a tourism cluster and region on the Black Sea coast,” he said, according to Tass.
Zelensky talked about the casino industry during the Ukraine-Turkey business forum in Istanbul on Thursday. He said that instead of seeing Turkey as a competitor, he wants to take the Turkish businesses as partners. “Let us jointly promote the tourism brand of the Black Sea across the world,” he told Turkish investors.
Ukraine banned gambling in 2009, but gambling businesses still operate without contributing to taxes. Therefore, they don’t bring revenues to the national budget. The Finance Ministry said that gambling could bring approximately US$200 million to the budget. However, experts believe that more that Ukraine could perceive more than US$400 million if they legalise gambling.
Ukraine has lost €1.7 billion over the gambling ban
Alexander Yaroslavsky, the founder of the Development Construction Holding (DCH), said that Ukraine’s budget could have counted with more than €1.7 billion in taxes over the past five years if the gambling ban didn’t exist.
The founder of DCH said that while he personally didn’t like casinos as he doesn’t “have the time” for that, the gambling industry exists in other countries and therefore they should not give the money to corrupt people in Ukraine.
“Ukrainian budget has lost about €1.7 billion over 5 years as I mentioned. Just compare two sums. We can not find €105 million dollars for the construction of the takeoff strip in Dnipro but €1.7 billion just disappeared in the pockets of corrupt officials,” Yaroslavsky said.
