New gambling law for Serbia

Serbia adopted a new gambling law on November 22. The law aims to reduce the number of illegal operators and tackle the problem of money laundering associated with the industry.

The new law has been welcomed by the trade association JAKTA, who met with the Serbian Gaming Board the day after the legislation was passed. “We are very optimistic," said JAKTA president Mirjana Acimovic. “We can see that our conscientious work in gathering the relevant facts about gaming markets in the former Yugoslavia and the rest of Europe has been worthwhile. We compared different national regulatory models and collaborated with relevant partners such as testing laboratories, reputable companies and associations. JAKTA put a lot of effort into lobbying the government for the creation of a well-regulated gaming market.”

“The new law will lead to the opening up of the online gaming market,” said the director of the Serbian Gaming Board, Aleksandar Vulovic, adding: “There are three really important things that have been passed in this law.” According to Vulovic, the first and most important is controlling online gaming, the second is the electronic monitoring of operators and the third is the streamlining of taxation for the industry.

Legitimate gaming operators in Serbia have found it increasingly difficult to compete with the massive black market in the past five years. The Gaming Board is now planning to crack down hard on illegal operators who are believed to outnumber their law-abiding counterparts two to one. The Gaming Board will have the backing of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to achieve this and the tax authorities will enforce the law in the field.

The central monitoring of operators is expected to be a powerful tool for the government to get a clear picture of the size of the industry, in order to regulate more effectively in future with fairer taxation, protection of players and promotion of a legal industry. The Gaming Board will also use the services of a gaming laboratory to license machines and there will be a limit of five machines in one gaming arcade. Video surveillance will be necessary in order to control under-age gambling. All gaming licences will have a duration of 10 years.

“In our opinion, the most important aspect of this new law is that the Serbian government has decided to strengthen its Gaming Board and to assist it in every way,” said JAKTA president Mirjana Acimovic.

Source: http://intergameonline.com