Fines for 5 gambling business types will be raised, and parliament will review these changes, Lasha Pitnava, Head of the Gambling Business Policy Department at the Ministry of Finance, says.
In his words, these reforms will lead to a balanced partnership between the private sector and the public sector.
In the gambling business, we identify two types of violations: non-compliance with permit conditions and late payment of the licensing fee. In this case, we’ll raise fines for permit condition violations. Parliament will review these changes. In particular, concerning casino licenses, if the fine for exceeding the deadline was 20,000, it stays at 20,000. However, the fine for breaching the license conditions, which was 7,000, is being brought up to 20,000. The same applied to slot machines.
For example, the fine for violation of payment deadlines was 10,000, for violation of permit conditions - 1,000, and we equalize it to 10,000. We are increasing the fines for a total of 5 types of gambling.
These include casino games, gaming rooms with slot machines, electronic games provided in systematic form, and gambling clubs.
In 2020, about 70,000 fines were paid into the budget, in 2025 - 410,000. In fact, seven times as much was paid over the five-year period,' Lasha Pitnava notes.
Recall that in the first reading, parliament supported amendments to the Law "On the organization of lotteries, gambling and other prize games" by 86 votes. The initiator of the bill is the Government of Georgia, the author is the Ministry of Finance of Georgia.
