Taking a leaf out of the Trumpian playbook, embattled Ukraine has used social media to announce the creation of a brand new state gambling regulator to replace the controversial KRAIL, which authorities claimed had been penetrated by Russian state agents.
The new regulator is to be called PlayCity, Ukrainian media, citing a Telegram social media posting by Cabinet Minister Taras Melnychuk, reported at the weekend.
Ukraine’s Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries, known by its Ukrainian acronym, KRAIL, is set to be liquidated on April 1, after an investigation by the Volodymyr Zelenskyy administration found it riddled with corruption and illegal ties to Russia-compromised online casinos.
PlayCity will be housed in the same premise used by KRAIL, with the same number of employees, 61, and will report to Mykhailo Fedorov, a deputy prime minister who is responsible for Innovation, Science and Technology Development, said the Telegram post.
Wartime Economy
It will be the “central executive body [overseeing] the organisation and regulation of gambling and lotteries”, and takes over the UAH160.4 million (£2.97m) budget previously allocated to KRAIL.
The decision to liquidate KRAIL was passed into law by President Zelenskyy in January this year after a string of controversies alleging Russian collusion, exploitation and manipulation of Ukraine’s wartime economy, as Ukraine has sought to de-Russify its financial system following Putin’s full-scale invasion on February 22, 2022.
Last year KRAIL CEO Ivan Rudyi was arrested and detained on serious charges of facilitating and supporting online Russian casinos in Ukraine, amid the nation’s existential fight for survival against its powerful neighbour.
And previously the Ukrainian National News Agency (UNN) reported that a company called Your Betting Company LLC had been given a gambling licence to operate in the nation even though it was allegedly an avatar of Russian gambling operator 1Xbet.
Scrutiny
Despite remonstrations, KRAIL remained passive and refused to investigate the illegal front.
KRAIL was formed and gambling–outlawed since 2009–was effectively legalised in Ukraine in July 2020, as part of the Zelenskyy government’s bid to revitalise the nation’s moribund economy.
President Putin had already annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and the Kremlin was aggressively supporting a debilitating insurgency by Russian-speaking rebels in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
As the Russian noose tightened so too did Ukrainian economic oversight and scrutiny.
One of PlayCity’s paramount tasks will be to deal with the growing clamour to impose tougher safe gambling controls in the embattled nation amid fears that betting addiction is impacting the morale of frontline troops, who, as we know, are already gambling with their lives every day.
