Its a proven fact that Russia is one of the countries more passionate about gambling and casinos. We recently read in the news that Russia’s Interior Minister just shut down another 10 illegal casinos and gambling rings in Moscow. Each of these clandestine establishments was making a profit of around $3K.

The local authorities reported that they seized around 300 slot machines and a big amount of software and computer equipped for gambling. Besides, they seized a sum of money that has not been made public yet.

According to Europa Press, police department has declared that all the criminals captured are immigrants from Georgia and Udmurtia, and that the illegal activity was operated remotely.

For many years, Russia has been a paradise for corruption. Maybe it still is in the eyes of rest of the world. However, the government is making an effort in fighting this perception, and recently the deputy head of Moscow Police department was arrested suspected of the covering up of many illegal activities, being illegal gambling one of them. Despite all this effort, many of these arrests have been declared illegal by the Supreme Court due to ridiculous reasons and allegations.

In the last five years, a total of 61.000 illegal casinos and gambling business have been shut down. That’s the result of a new law that limited gambling activities to only four regions of Russia. During this police actions, around 800.000 slot machines have been confiscated, together with much more software and machines used for gambling. This is a hard punch for illegal gambling, but the authorities declare that they need to remain firm, and strengthen the collaboration between all police departments in order to finish with illegal gambling related activities. They also complain that the law is very soft with these activities, and the fines are very low, which makes the criminals turn back into the game as soon as they can.

The current situation, when Russia is under the media focus due to the Sochi Winter Olympic games, makes a great opportunity to show the rest of the world that Russia is changing, and is becoming a transparent country where corruption is no longer part of its culture. However, most of the people think they still have a long way to go. But Russian government is in the need of good news, as there is a lot of pressure on them due to the poor organization of the Sochi games, and the terrorist threats around the event.

You can find an interesting documentary about Russian mafia here: