22 December 2015, 13:45
The Committee members noted that the explanatory note to the draft law (No.3632) reads that its adoption "will enable to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens, to minimize social damage caused by the organization and holding of illegal gambling and tax evasion related hereto, to minimize risks for the society and vulnerable groups of the population from participation in gambling, to attract investment in Ukraine's economy, create jobs and obtain substantial source of additional revenues to the state budget of Ukraine."
At the same time, the Committee members noted the following.
Article 1 of the draft law does not contain a clear definition of the concepts "lottery," "participation in lottery." The lack of the specified clear definition may result in different interpreting all terms of the Law and further committing corruption offenses by certain persons. The concept "lottery" may also include online games.
The following provisions contain corruption risks:
provision of Item 15, Section 1 of Article 7 "Powers of an authorized body," by which this body is vested with the following authority: "may set requirements to the size of the gambling gain...";
provision of Section 2 of Article 14 contains powers of an authorized body to determine criteria for diagnosing a person with gaming addiction.
provision of Section 5 of Article 30, which vests an authorized body with actually unlimited functions of intervening in the activities of entities when setting the list of lotteries, their spreading - "An authorized body at sole discretion may refuse coordinating a particular kind of lottery...";
The draft law has no clear definition of an administrative procedure concerning the order of carrying out scheduled and unscheduled inspections of public lotteries.
Also, corruptogenic risks contain provisions of Item 3 of Article 24 "Lottery operator," which sets the requirements to legal entities:
carrying out of the activity for the production and/or holding of lotteries of at least five years before the application submission;
availability of international experience in the production and/or holding of lotteries in at least three foreign countries;
total turnover for five financial years preceding the competition, is not less than three billion euros."
The draft law does not contain the whole range of detailed government control mechanisms regarding regulation of the activity in the sphere of organization and holding of gambling, which enables to further handle its provisions in favor of officials, their personal interests and entities of gambling business.
Taking the above into account and in order to eliminate corruptogenic factor the Committee proposes to reject the said draft law.