10:49 26.06.2017

Lottery operators must be licensed in nearest future – Lutsenko

2 min read
Lottery operators must be licensed in nearest future – Lutsenko

Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers ought to solve the problem of license issue for legal lottery operation in the near future, head of Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) Yuiry Lutsenko has said.

"The Cabinet is devising the licensing procedure, but Ukraine's National Lottery, as the single taxpayer in the lottery business, has legal status," Lutsenko said during a briefing in Zhytomyr on June 23.

The PGO chief expressed regret that Ukraine's lottery business is associated with corruption involving law-enforcement officials.

"We closed hundreds of lotteries last year. Unfortunately, they popped up again, like mushrooms after a storm," Lutsenko said.

"I think this problem can be solved legislatively, just as the bootleg amber mining problem, illegal logging, etc. It is possible to punish offenders, but it necessary to allow operators to work legally. Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers, in my opinion, must in the nearest future issue official licenses to one, two, three… however many lotteries they deem fit. That will be the legal foundation, and all other [lotteries] not operating according to it should be eliminated from the streets of our cities," the PGO head said.

According to Lutsenko, this will be a difficult task, inasmuch as lotteries "as a rule are protected by law-enforcement agencies."

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