Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov asked to postpone consideration of a draft law prohibiting betting in bookmaker offices for incapacitated citizens who have debts. About this Reports “Kommersant”.
Siluanov sent a similar letter to the office of the relevant Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Grigorenko. It is proposed to postpone consideration of the bill until the fall.
A group of senators submitted a draft law on gambling regulation to the Duma in March 2024, but the document did not go beyond the first reading. It prohibits the application of rates to incapacitated persons and those identified as evading enforcement proceedings, including in cases of payment of alimony. In addition, accepting bets from minors is prohibited. As Kommersant explains, there is now only a ban on minors betting, and bookmakers do not have to accept it.
In January 2026, the Duma Committee on Economic Policy presented a revised version of the draft law. It has been approved by the government, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance and the Presidential Administration. According to Kommersant, the consideration of the draft law was delayed due to the position of bookmakers, who insist on maintaining current standards. According to calculations of the Unified Gambling Regulator (ERAI), bettors can lose up to 40% of their audience, because this is the percentage of players who have debt obligations.
Another problem delaying the consideration of the bill is checking the legal capacity of betting customers and whether they have debts. According to Kommersant’s interlocutors, the cost of such orders will cost an average of about 150-200 million rubles per bookmaker per year.
“Implementing such an initiative is now impossible – bookmakers do not have access to the existing database of debtors, and the FSSP database contains a lot of confidential information,” Nikolai Oganezov, advisor to the general director of Fonbet, told the newspaper. According to him, the ban on participants in enforcement proceedings requires clarification, because it puts people, for example, who have not seen a letter with a car fine, or those who are in the process of appealing the fine, on a par with malicious evaders. He pointed out that such fallacies “will lead to a shrinkage of the market and a decline in targeted deductions.”