Sports betting is back, while the National Lottery is removed from the Assembly

2024-02-15 14:30:00, Aktualitet CNA

With 72 votes in favor, two abstentions and last-minute amendments, Socialist MPs approved the bill to bring back online betting five years after the Rama government banned them. Opposition MPs oppose the process as non-transparent.

The Socialist majority on Thursday approved the draft law for the return of online sports betting, making a last-minute amendment that removes the right of the Assembly to grant the license of the National Lottery.

With 72 votes in favor and 2 abstentions, the law will restore sports betting after more than 5 years that it was closed by the government.

Deputies Fatmir Xhafaj and Erion Braçe abstained, but without arguing their position. Braçe, as a member of the Economy and Finance committee where the government's initiative was examined for 4 consecutive months, has expressed his reservations about the effects of the law.

The draft law suffered some changes from the version approved by this committee, after some deputies filed amendments in the session.

According to these amendments, the license for the National Lottery will no longer be approved by the Assembly, but by the License Commission, a structure established by this law for the licensing of companies that will enter the online betting market.

"The license for the right to organize National Lottery games is a single one and is granted for a period of 10 years to the applicant entity, which is selected first in the competition process, developed according to the procedures defined in this law and legal acts issued in its implementation. The license is approved by decision of the License Commission and becomes effective after the signing of the agreement between the licensee, the General Director of AMLF and the chairman of the License Commission," the amendment states.

Likewise, according to the proponents, the Minister of Sports is removed from the membership of the License Commission and replaced by the Minister of the Interior, on the grounds that it is important for the verification of the documentation of the companies that will compete for these licenses.

The opposition has opposed the return of online betting, demanding that before this is done, there should be an analysis of the flourishing of this sector informally and that the criteria be stronger for the companies that will enter the market.

Deputy Jorida Tabaku told BIRN that the Games of Chance law was accompanied by a non-transparent decision-making process, where a large part of the discussions took place outside the commission's doors.

"No one understood why he withdrew several times from the vote and as a result, in a recent amendment, he removed from the parliament the possibility of granting the National Lottery license and passed it to the License Commission," said Tabaku after the vote.

According to Tabak, the law has many shortcomings in the control of cash flows, in validating the granting of licenses and has very easy criteria to enter the market.

"It puts the stamp on the entire failure of the entire operation for informality and which has been one of the three ways money has been laundered so far," added Tabaku.

Making a comparison with the government's operation to close them, Tabaku emphasized "I can only give one name to what happened: There is no end to the stupidity".

Even the democratic deputy Dhurata Çupi has opposed this draft law as a clientelist. "There should have been a government analysis of the illegal sector and the failure to stop this activity," Çupi told BIRN.

"They failed to provide convincing explanations for the factual situation of the entities that currently carry out this activity in accordance with the law and the relevant licenses," she added.

The variant brought by the government underwent many changes during the examination in the parliamentary committee of Finance and Economy.

The final draft foresees the establishment of conditional criteria to participate in the competition, setting a 30 percent quota of shares for foreign shareholders in competing companies, as well as the auction mechanism to select the winners.

It also decides the exclusion of the organizers of "Online Sports Betting" from sponsoring sports teams, while the president of the Albanian Football Federation and the president of the Olympic Committee were removed from the membership of the Project Support Council.

The Project Support Council manages the income that comes from betting.

A new point was added regarding state control over the activity of the concessionary company that has built and maintains the central online monitoring system. This control will be done by the License Commission through audit.

Changes were also made in the articles on the winning rate of national lotteries players, which decreased from 80 percent to "not less than 50 percent"./ Reporter.al