Coordinator of gambling market regulator to be determined by govt – head of Rada committee

The Verkhovna Rada deliberately gave the government the authority to designate the ministry that will coordinate the work of the new regulator of the gambling and lottery market to replace the liquidated Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries, said head of the parliamentary committee on finance, taxation and customs policy Danylo Hetmantsev.

"The adoption of such a decision – it will be the Ministry of Finance or the Ministry of Digital Transformation or even the Ministry of Sports [as in many countries] – this is a matter of determining and forming policy by the Cabinet of Ministers, and not the Verkhovna Rada," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"We assume that it could be the Ministry of Digital Transformation. But we still wanted to transfer this to the level of competence of the Cabinet of Ministers so that it could decide. We should not make such decisions based on personalities and replacing the Cabinet of Ministers," the head of the committee added.

He noted that Ukraine currently has a strong Minister of Digital Transformation. "But tomorrow, if he is not there or he goes to some other position, but the law states that it is the Ministry of Digital Transformation?" he argued for the need for an institutional approach at the level of the government.

He recalled that the new law on the liquidation of the Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries and strengthening control over the gambling market (No. 9256d) stipulates that the new body will be a service with a sole leader, which will be coordinated by one of the ministries, but a specific ministry has not been determined, because this decision must be made by the Cabinet of Ministers.

At the same time, the structure and distribution of powers between the service and the ministry that will coordinate its activities are directly prescribed in the law. "As for the danger of the transition period, there will be no transition period: the Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries will work until there is an order from the Cabinet of Ministers to transfer powers to the created body, and from that moment, the body will work again, that is, there will be no anarchy," Hetmantsev emphasized.

As reported, on December 18, officers of the State Bureau of Investigations and the Prosecutor General's Office detained head of the Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries Ivan Rudy on suspicion of assisting the operation of a Russian online casino in Ukraine and illegal possession of drugs, and the next day the court chose a preventive measure for him in the form of detention until February 4, 2025, without the right to bail.

In turn, the Commission reported on its website that it had not received any official information on this issue and noted "a significant increase in the number of manipulations and outright fakes in the information space related to the work of the state regulator."

The Commission indicated that it continues to work in the normal mode.