awmakers overrode a presidential veto Thursday and said the law would help fight widespread gambling addiction. A total of 390 deputies in the 450-seat assembly backed the legislation.
The law will now take effect after its official publication pending passage of new legislation confining gambling institutions to special zones outside city centres. It bars casinos, halls with slot machines, bookmaking shops and internet gambling.
President Viktor Yushchenko vetoed the law last week after it sparked protests from the gambling business, whose representatives said 200,000 people would be put out of work.
Yushchenko must now sign the bill into law within 10 days.
Gambling halls, many of them small and dingy, have sprung up in Ukraine and other former Soviet states in the years following the 1991 collapse of communism.
