Ukrainian gambling regulator grants 152 licences in Q1

The regulator had received 194 applications.

Ukraine.- The Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (KRAIL) has reported granting 152 gambling licences in the first quarter of the year. They comprise 138 gaming machine licences, three gambling service provider licences, nine table game licences, one online casino licence and one licence for a roulette wheel.

The regulator had received 194 licence applications. It said two failed owing to insufficient information on documents, while one was directly rejected.

Meanwhile, there have been calls for the government to ban members of the armed forces from gambling. A petition on the matter started by a solider quickly surpassed the 25,000 signatures necessary to qualify for presidential consideration.

Pavlo Petrychenko, a member of the 59th brigade, said he aimed to raise awareness of “the harm that the gambling business causes to the Ukrainian army and Ukrainian society”. He called for online gambling to be banned for all military personnel by martial law.

The soldier said that some gambling companies were specifically aiming marketing at members of the armed forces by using military symbols and “whitewashing” their business through small charitable donations. He also suggested that Russian gambling operators were targeting Ukrainian soldiers in order to access personal data.