Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has denied a report that he supports creation of a gambling zone in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi, where the Winter Olympics will be held this year.
The newspaper Kommersant said Mr Medvedev broached the subject of casinos at a recent meeting convened by government officials seeking ways to offset losses expected by investors, including state-owned companies, on the large amounts of money they have plowed into the development of Sochi ahead of the games.
With a price tag of more than US$50 billion, the Sochi games are the most expensive Olympics of all time.
“The premier did not suggest the idea of creating a gambling zone in Sochi. The idea was suggested by someone in the banking community,” Mr Medvedev’s press secretary Natalia Timakova said. “Some businessmen are obviously trying to give their ideas more weight by putting words into the premier’s mouth.”
The Kremlin banished casinos from Russia’s major cities in 2009, restricting them to four designated zones in more remote areas of the country: in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, the southern Krasnodar region near the Black Sea, Altai in Central Asia, and the Primorye region, which includes Vladivostok, in the country’s Far East, where an investment group controlled by Macau casino operator Lawrence Ho and Cambodia’s NagaCorp both plan to develop resort casinos targeting the northern China market.
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