Firstly, it has unfortunately become the norm for the Head of the Committee on Taxation, Customs and Financial Policy to develop gambling laws without a dialogue with legal gambling organizers. For some reason, someone always decides that they know more than the real sector of the economy. But all of this is done for a reason: it is clear that the Head of the Committee is lobbying for the interests of the lottery business, which are that lottery operators need to close the white gambling market in order to deal with their black gambling market. Everything is very simple.
Unfortunately, the recent decision of the National Security and Defense Council will be used by Mr Hetmantsev for his narrow personal goals and interests and will not bring anything good for the state. Mr Hetmantsev is already starting to manipulate the NSDC decision by claiming that everything envisaged in this decision is taken into account in his draft law. This is not true. After all, his bill is purely a lobbying bill for lotteries. I wonder if he reported this to the President.
Fair decisions can only be made in a dialogue between the parliament, the executive branch and business representatives. Anything that is developed without business representatives is evidence that the relevant draft laws are intended to hide lobbyist rather than state interests. This is understandable, given the fact that Mr Hetmantsev, as the author of the draft law, is trying to create a separate state body that will deal only with lotteries.
It is clear that he does not like CRGL. After all, CRGL did not approve or allow the licensing conditions that spelled out the schemes of the black and grey lottery market to imitate gambling. Therefore, it was necessary to raise the very sensitive topic of the military not to solve military or national security issues and the fight against illegal gambling, but to create a new state body under this background. Therefore, we hope that there is still time, and we hope that the chairman of the relevant committee will listen to the position of the business and create a state law, not a draft law for lotteries. After all, according to the Law of Ukraine on the Status of People's Deputy of Ukraine, MPs have an obligation to protect the interests of all citizens of Ukraine, not just two or three companies.
This draft law also violates the Constitutional provision that the state is the guarantor of equal opportunities for the development of competitiveness in business. It turns out that in the Ukrainian jurisdiction, it has strangely happened that lotteries are not recognized as gambling at the legislative level, although they have all the signs of gambling. Secondly, by killing gambling advertising, lottery operators unleash their illegal activities and help other 1200 illegal gambling websites to get more opportunities to spread their information than that of legal gambling organizers.
Accordingly, it is clear that in this case, lottery lobbyists are playing along with representatives of the aggressor state. Among the 1,200 websites, at least 300-400 are sites that have ties to the racist federation and at the same time operate powerfully in the Ukrainian Internet segment.
I appeal to the members of the Ukrainian parliament to be guided by the state interests, not the interests of lotteries.