Gambling in Armenia to be overseen by monitoring center - SRC head

YEREVAN, August 14. /ARКА/. Gambling in Armenia will henceforth be controlled by the relevant monitoring center, said Eduard Hakobyan, Chairman of the State Revenue Committee (SRC).

At a meeting on Thursday, the government established several procedures, particularly, for holding a competition to select an operator for regulating the gambling sector, for participating in the competition as part of a consortium, for concluding an agreement with the operator, as well as the grounds for declaring the competition invalid.

According to Hakobyan, this decision is based on the respective law and is aimed at improving the effectiveness of control in this area.

“In particular, the procedure for holding a competition, participation standards, requirements for applicants, the procedure for deciding the winner and a number of other issues are regulated. The operator will be selected through an open competition by the inter-agency committee, the composition of which and the work procedure have already been approved by the decision of the Prime Minister,” Hakobyan noted.

The head of the State Revenue Committee emphasized that the main requirements for the operator are established by the law; the operator will monitor game bets in real time and will create a corresponding monitoring center.

“Both equipment and the platforms through which the games are organized will be connected to this monitoring center. As a result of this reform, it will be possible to control the financial flows of game organizers, the winnings of registered players. From next year, these winnings will be considered income and subject to income tax,” Hakobyan said.-0-