OREANDA-NEWS. April 7, 2008. Last week Regional Association of Gambling Operators in the Southern Federal District, Russian Association “Mir Igr”, Kuban Gaming Business Association and Krasnodar Regional Gaming Business Development Association published an open letter to governors of Rostov and Krasnodar regions Vladimir Chub and Alexander Tkachev, as well as to chairmen of the regional legislative assemblies Victor Deriabkin and Vladimir Beketov. The letter suggested that the regional authorities should put forward a legislative initiative to the RF State Duma on amending Federal Law “On state regulation of activities involved in gambling organization and arrangement…”: to prolong operations of gambling facilities till July 1st, 2012.

Giving reasons, the industry associations speak of the following. The governmental decree was passed with almost half a year delay. Consequently, the regional authorities have not had enough time to approve the procedure of allotting land plots and issuing permissions to the gaming zone operators, the status of lands has not been changed, the architectural concept has not been developed, the tax policy has not been agreed upon, etc. According to the officials` plan, “Azov City” shall be visited by at least 2 million 300 thousand people – only the entire tourism industry could handle such a flow. “It is impossible to have these plans implemented not for the “runaround” but for uttermost business development within the area by July 1st, 2009,” believe the authors of the letter.