site.btaParliament Bans Privately Operated Lotteries

February 7 (BTA) - Without a debate, Bulgaria's National
Assembly Friday conclusively amended the Gambling Act
practically banning privately operated lotteries in the country
and making this business a State monopoly. Under the amendments,
 a licence to organize lotteries may be issued solely to the
State, and the State-owned Bulgarian Sports Totalizator (BST)
alone will be able to administrate lotteries with the exception
of raffles, Bingo, Keno and their varieties.

The revisions do not provide for a transitional period, and
immediately after they enter into force all private lotteries,
including the immensely popular Lottery Bulgaria and National
Lottery (operated by companies owned by gambling mogul Vassil
Bojkov) will automatically forfeit their licences and will have
to discontinue the distribution and sale of tickets and cards
for participation in their games and to destroy the unsold
tickets until the end of 2020.

The bill's sponsor, Valeri Simeonov MP of the United Patriots,
expects the law to be gazetted next week. This must be done
within 14 days of the passage of the legislation, unless the
President vetoes it.

Simeonov reasoned his motion by a scratch card lottery craze
that has gripped Bulgaria in recent years and has assumed
epidemic proportions, especially among adolescents and socially
disadvantaged people. Capital weekly estimates that 100 million
scratch cards were sold in the country in 2017, and a Gallup
poll found that 57 per cent of Bulgarians engage in some form of
 gambling. Experts rank Bulgaria's gambling industry (employing
177,000 people) as the second biggest in the EU after Malta's.
Bulgaria is the only EU Member State in which the law does not
require lottery operators to donate a portion of their profits
to good causes. TV commercials of lotteries and scratch cards
are technically banned, but broadcasters are allowed to show
draws and interviews with winners, as a result of which they
dominate the TV slots for commercials.

Gambling companies were the biggest advertisers on Bulgarian
television in 2017.

Neither Simeonov's bill nor the version adopted, however,
provide for a restriction of another, just as dangerously
addictive and burgeoning form of gambling: one arm bandit halls.
 

The BST will have to carry out its gambling activity on own or
rented premises, which are self-contained and expressly marked
as such. Lottery winnings may not be paid out outside the
designated outlets or outside banks.

Games of chance can no longer be organized in buildings
constituting condominium ownership without the consent of the
owners given at a general meeting.

Lottery tickets, coupons and cards may not be sold to persons
aged under 18.

Parliament voted down a motion by BSP for Bulgaria to impose a
total ban on advertising for gambling. Simeonov described the
proposal as "very apt and bold" but he himself abstained when it
 was put to the vote because, he argued, this restriction would
expose to a risk the existence of a number of sports clubs and
federations which rely on advertisements as a source of income.

After the vote, Socialist MP Kroum Zarkov said that his
parliamentary group did not back the so-called etatization of
this business because it did not see sufficient guarantees for
it. BSP for Bulgaria proposed a restriction on aggressive
advertising as it leads to "addiction to this dangerous
product". The Socialists also supported a limitation of the sale
 of lottery tickets.

Simeonov told journalists that all unpaid winners can take
action to get their winnings according to the common rules of
the games concerned or can sue the organizers. He does not think
 that the State can be a respondent in such cases because the
bets have already been made and the draws have already been
held.

The MP said that the number of scratch cards imported and
released for sale in Bulgaria is suspected to mismatch the
number registered with the State Commission for Gambling (SCG),
and this discrepancy will be probed shortly.

Simeonov dismissed as fake news allegations that the gambling
market is being redistributed from one private operator to
another, arguing that the BST may not be awarded to a
concessionaire or privatized.

The Gambling Act amendments came to the limelight after a
massive crackdown on Vassil Bojkov in recent days. An audit
found that his lotteries had paid lower licensing fees than the
BST with the SCG turning a blind eye, while the Exchequer had
lost half a billion leva in revenue. Law enforcers conducted
checks at the Commission, and its former and incumbent chairmen
were arrested. Bojkov himself was charged with evasion of fees,
money laundering, extortion, bribery, murder and rape, and
leading an organized crime group since 2014. He left the country
 before the attack against him went in full swing and was later
arrested in the United Arab Emirates, from where Bulgaria hopes
to get him extradited. RY, LN/LG


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