A petition signed by more than 25,000 people is asking Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to lift sanctions against the gaming company Parimatch LLC that he imposed by executive order in March, Gambling News reported June 8.
The executive order required several betting companies to cease operating in Ukraine because of questionable loyalties. The implication was that some of the sanctioned companies might be loyal to Moscow rather than Kyiv.
Parimatch is one of the country’s largest bookmakers.
President Zelenskyy can’t simply ignore the petition. He is required by law to respond to any petition that has 25,000 signatures within 10 days of receiving it.
Parimatch is managed by Energame. Maxym Liashko, managing partner, commented, “We are Ukrainian patriots. Our fellow countrymen and countrywomen unequivocally agree with that. We have supported our country against Russia’s full-scale invasion from the first day, and immediately moved to terminate any remaining legacy business in the aggressor country.”
Liashko added, “We are confident that Ukraine is on an irreversible road to becoming a democratic European nation where people can live and do business freely, while enjoying the full protection of the law. We trust that our President, a champion of the rule of law and liberal democratic values, will do the right thing and order a review of the unjust sanctions that were imposed on us in a flawed and unfair process.”
The company has maintained that it no longer has business ties with the Russian Federation. It points out that it ended any third party license agreements with Russian companies right after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in March 2022.
Liashko said that while it was right for the government to sanction companies or individuals who were trying to undermine the country, “However, mistakes are sometimes made, as happened in the case of Parimatch. A robust review and appeal system is therefore an essential part of any sanctions regime.”
The company claims it has donated more than $14 million to the war effort.
Occurring more or less simultaneously to this development was the raid of eight addresses of underground casinos near Kyiv conducted by detectives of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine (ESBU). The police seized about 100 computers, several poker tables, playing cards and chips, plus money transfer devices, documents and £2,200/$2,700/€2,500 in cash.
The clandestine casinos that were based in Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv Oblast also violated the city’s midnight to 5 a.m. curfew—besides violating Article 203 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament) voted to regulate gambling in 2020, legalizing brick-and-mortar casinos, iGaming, online poker and betting.
