There are almost 10,000 illegal online games of chance machines in Bolivia

According to Cárdenas, entertainment equipments that entered by Peru, Chile and Brazil, where they had a modification of the casino regulations, which made owners sell their equipments in order to avoid their confiscation. “I estimate there must be around 1,000 illegal machines in the country”, said Cárdenas.

This entrance must have been produced since 1996, when the Supreme Decree 24,446 was approved, which stipulates that the National Lottery is the only public entity that may administrate, control, supervise and regulate all the lottery games, a norm in which they based to authorize the temporary operation of casinos.

The executive of the Lottery assured that these machines entered, in some cases, via smuggling, and in others, incurring in fiscal fraud, declaring a value that did not correspond to these machines. In the case of the 1,445 machines, he explained, came from Chile and declared a value of us$ 250 each.

“We know that each machine costs between us$ 1,500 to 4,000, so they are committing a fraud”, said Cárdenas, who considers that, as there are many casinos, a lot of electronic games are brought to the country.

To solve the situation, Lonabol is working in a norm that will set the number of casinos that will operate in each department and the number of machines that will have to be installed in each one. This norm will be put into force through a supreme decree or law, which, according to Cardenas, will be ready in 120 days, and until that moment, it was suspended the granting of licenses for this activity.

The National Lottery, together with the Public Ministry and the National Customs, started to detect and confiscate illegal machines. So far it made nine raids to gambling venues in different areas of La Paz and seized 200 slots.

These, he said, were sent to a storage for a technical revision, in order to verify if they have declare their legal value.