Nearly 1 million gambling devices and related items have been seized from illegal casinos in Russia over the past five years, the Prosecutor General’s Office said.
Since the Kremlin outlawed casinos under legislation passed in 2009, the industry has been banished to four specially designated areas in remote parts of the country. Elsewhere, in major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg where it previously flourished, the industry went underground, and in the cat and mouse game with law enforcement that has ensued more than 100,000 facilities have been investigated, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
In the process, more than 70,000 illegal gambling facilities and 812 illegal casinos have been closed and more than 970,000 items of gambling equipment, the office said.
Fines totaling more than 684 million rubles (US$18.5 million) have been imposed and more than 115 million rubles collected through court orders.
Criminal proceedings were initiated in 1,664 cases.
