Casino operator asks Russia to keep gambling zone open

A company that operates in the Azov-City asked Russia’s president to keep the gambling zone open.

Maxim Smolentsev, director of CJSC Shambala, a company that operates Shambala casino located in the Azov-City gaming zone wrote an open letter to President Vladimir Putin and asked him to keep running operations in the zone.

Last year, the President signed an amended federal law that forces casinos located within Azov-City gaming zone to shut down operations by Jan 1, 2019. The same federal law established that gambling activities would be shifted to Sochi, another gambling zone in Russia. That order was part of another extension set in April 2015.

Smolentsev said in his letter that by closing the three casinos in Azov 2000 Russians would be out of jobs and also cause a US$7 million shortage of annual tax revenue, local media revealed as they obtained parts of the written letter. The director also said that there aren’t intelligent reasons to close the gambling zone and that they’ve been cheated by the government as eight years ago the operators were promised that the zone status would continue to be the same for at least 50 years.

Last year, Smolentsev said that if the government was really interested in closing down the Azov-City gaming zone, then the company would seek compensation for “all costs and loss of profit,” an amount he estimated could total US$151 million.