A commission to control games of chance would be created in Ecuador

The project would have five considerations, eight chapters and four general regulations. The commission would have the power to propose the Ministry of Tourism the adoption of technical regulations for the granting of licenses, management and operation of games of chance, according to what is necessary to achieve the compliance of this law.

Such commission, according to the document, will not have any representative of the legal casinos, but it will be comprosed by three members appointed by the Ministries of Tourism, which will head it, and the Ministries of the Interior and the District Attorney’s Office.

The commission will be in charge of performing audiences every time that infringements to the law or technical regulations related to it are presented, and set fines as well as suspend, limit, condition or revoke operating licenses.

Among its faculties, if approved the text, it has the capacity to control and examine, without previous notification, every center in which games of chance are developed or every center which stores, manufactures, sell or distribute devices or equipments used in games, and confiscate or seize them in order to analize, prove or control.

The commission, adds the document, will be able to issue or renovate: casino licenses for a year; licenses for slot halls; licenses to manufacture, import and distribute games of chance devices; record of the employees that work in key functions in casinos and gambling venues; acknowledgement of the capacity of people that facilitate pieces of furniture, buildings, financing, equipments, supplies or services connected to those businesses.

In order to grant the licenses to operate games of chance, according to the new project, they will have to resign to any right of confidentiality to have access to personal information, as well as every financial record, no matter where it is located. Even, when signing and presenting a request to obtain an operating license for a casino or gambling venue, the applicant authorizes the commission to obtain information, may be public or private, in or out Ecuador, related to their background or behaviour, or from shareholders, officers, directors, partners, agents or employees related to these businesses.

Due to these and other aspects, operators and owners of the 32 casinos oprating in top-level hotels in the county fear that, with the approval of the new law and the penal reforms that regulate games of chance, the sector that in 2009 brought the state around $ 2 million is criminalized.

Besides, they regret that there is no difference between casinos and gambling venues. The first ones have 280 machines registered and are ruled according to technical norms approved in 2008, while the second ones would oprate illegally in the country with around 5,000 machines, located in garages, subsoils and houses close to schools, without paying taxes to the state.