Saturday, December 23, 2006

A bill that would close most casinos and slot-machine halls in the country -
including Moscow and St. Petersburg - cleared a third and final reading
Wednesday in the State Duma. To become law, the bill still needs the
approval of the Federation Council and of President Vladimir Putin, who
submitted the draft in October.
The bill received the support of 428 out of 450 deputies, indicating that
the law is certain to be adopted. The bill calls for the creation of four
zones for legal gambling - the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, the Primorsky
region on the Pacific coast, the Siberian region of Altai and the southern
Krasnodar-Rostov area.
Casinos and slot-machine operations elsewhere in the country would be banned
as of July 1, 2009. Gambling experts have have voiced doubts that the areas
will be able to draw enough visitors to make gambling viable there.