Last week, unprecedented searches were held in legal gambling companies. They attacked a lot of B2B companies that actually provide the activity of the gambling segment, rather than organizing and conducting the gambling itself. However, various law enforcement structures for some reason accuse these companies of organizing gambling, although according to the license they are not allowed and do not do that.
Last Friday, Cosmolot became the victim of groundless searches, and this week the "show" of pressure from various government agencies on the legal gambling business continued with a series of tax audits. For example, conclusions or results of various reports from the tax service are especially "interesting", when due to an ambiguous interpretation of terms, for example, the tax on Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR), its calculation is incorrect. The same concerns the calculation of player winnings.
There is still no final certainty regarding gambling terminology in the legislation, but instead of ensuring this certainty and engaging in a dialogue with business, state agencies, on the contrary, interpret everything as it is beneficial to them. So, a situation arose when individual attacks on the gambling business turned into a system. At the same time, for some reason, nobody notices more than 1,200 illegal websites. They say that the state cannot completely close access to these sites or block them, that there are problems with cyber security. However, various internal researches of members of our Association prove that the ruscist Mostbet leads the rating of gambling traffic in Ukraine.
That is, Ukrainian or foreign companies that received the appropriate licenses, should be squeezed, pressured, and legal uncertainty should be used not for the benefit of the industry, but for the benefit of an unclear approach, but definitely for the benefit of the state. After all, any pressure worsens the mood of investors and discourages them from investing in the Ukrainian economy, especially in these difficult times. It is very hard to explain to investors why the legal gambling business is under even more pressure, however there is not fight against the illegal ones, and the market is completely unprotected in any segment.
In addition to illegal businesses, lottery operators actively perform illegal activities, because they work without the appropriate licenses, and at the same time they also imitate the work of bookmakers, online casinos and slot machines.
The conclusion is very simple: if the pressure does not stop, then there will be no legal gambling organizers in our country, who provide billions of hryvnias of revenue to the state budget. In addition to that, during the entire time of the second wave of ruscist aggression against Ukraine, all companies transferred almost UAH 2 billion to provide assistance of the state and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, illegal businesses do not pay for anything, do not bear any responsibility, do not help the state, the Armed Forces, or Ukrainians. The pressure on the legal gambling business does not strengthen the state, it only strengthens the black market and schemes of lottery operators.