Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has denied that he supports the creation of a gambling zone in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where the Winter Olympics will be held later this year.
The newspaper Kommersant said Medvedev brought up casinos at a recent meeting convened by government officials seeking ways to offset losses expected by investors, including state-owned companies, on the large amounts of money they have plowed into the development of Sochi ahead of the Olympics.
With a price tag of more than US$50 billion, the Sochi games will be the most expensive Olympics of all time.
“The premier did not suggest the idea of creating a gambling zone in Sochi. The idea was suggested by someone in the banking community,” his press secretary Natalia Timakova said. “Some businessmen are obviously trying to give their ideas more weight by putting words into the premier’s mouth.”
The Kremlin banned banished casinos from Russia’s major cities in 2009, restricting them to four designated zones in more remote areas: in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, the southern Krasnodar region near the Black Sea, Altai in Central Asia and the Primorye region, which includes Vladivostok, in the country’s Far East.
