Law passed in 2014
A 165,000-square-meter site near the former Olympic Village in Sochi will become Russia’s newest gaming zone.
The designation by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev isn’t news: President Vladimir Putin signed a law setting up the zones in Sochi and Crimea back in 2014, in an effort to make the areas more popular among tourists. And the concept of four dedicated gaming zones was actually conceived in 2009, when the government banned gaming everywhere but those special districts in an effort to curb the rapid spread of casinos throughout the country.
Under the plan, Olympic facilities in the region can host casinos, which must be financed by private investors, reported CalvinAyre.com.
Currently, the country has four such zones: Siberian Coin in Altay; Yantarnaya in the Kaliningrad region; Azov-City in the Rostov region; and Primorye near the port city of Vladivostok.
According to the Moscow Times, Summit Ascent Holdings’ Tigre de Cristal casino, which opened in the Far East’s Primorye zone last fall, is the biggest in Russia, and was expected to bring the region more than a billion rubles (US$16 million) in taxes per year.
