Russia to Create Unified Gambling Regulator

Publication date: 4 January 2021

At the end of 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that creates the Unified Gambling Regulator. The full text of the law was published on the official internet portal of legal information.

What is the Unified Gambling Regulator in Russia?

1. The Unified Gambling Regulator will operate under the Ministry of Finance The new regulatory body will have full authority to monitor all gambling providers in the country as well as identify and eliminate any illegal activities.
2. The Unified Center for Taking Bets will act as a financial institution when accepting bets from players on platforms of bookmakers and totalisators.
3. The Unified Center will automatically withhold targeted allocations from bookmakers, no matter what country sporting events take place in, as well as collect information about all bets.
4. The Unified Center will hand such allocations and information about bets over directly to the corresponding sports federation or league gambling operators are excluded from the process. Targeted allocations will amount to 1.5% of each bet accepted by the bookmaker.
5. Contributions from gambling providers will form a compensatory fund to ensure fulfillment of obligations towards players.

Furthermore, new rules regarding income legalization will come into force on 10 January 2021. All bets taken by gambling operators, including online casinos and sports betting platforms, as well as lotteries with prizes of 600,000 rubles and more will be subject to mandatory financial monitoring. Such measures will allow reducing the shadow sector of the economy as well as ensuring that businesses pay taxes in full. These amendments to legislation are aimed towards businesses with dishonest tax reporting and won’t affect bona fide companies and their counterparties. It is also worth noting that Russia’s Federal Taxation Service will start tracking data on e-wallets of Russians on 6 January 2021.