Illegal online gaming draining Czech economy

According to the Czech News Agency, the NKÚ also filed a criminal complaint over the Finance Ministry’s spending on the information system for state supervision and criticised such supervision over lotteries for being ineffective. The NKÚ said that many companies in the country are operating illegally and without the payments of contributions from their profits.

The Finance Ministry is aware of the situation and, having cited a 24-year-old law as the problem, it plans to introduce a new law that will allow legal operators based in other European Union member countries to offer gaming and lottery services in the Czech Republic.

The new bill, which the Finance Ministry said could boost state budget revenue by at least K1 billion, is due to be submitted to the government later this month or in October. In addition, the NKÚ also found that the administration and control system for the payments for lotteries is ineffective and bureaucratically demanding.

In response, the Finance Ministry said that it is in the process of preparing a technical solution for the central monitoring system based on the collection of data from operators in the country.

The NKÚ also criticised the Finance Ministry for not cancelling the permit of a single operator that has breached national gambling regulations. NKÚ suggested that some operators have breached regulations more than 50 times, whereas some had broken the rules more than 100 times.