Since Russia closed down its casinos and banned gambling in all but four far-away enclaves, cardsharps have been looking for a new home. They might have found it in Minsk, the Belarusian capital.

The Belarusian authorities have been liberalising their gambling laws and Minsk has seen its number of casinos proliferate. Moscow used to be peppered with gaudily lit gambling institutions and some, like Metalitsa on Novy Arbat in the centre of the city, became legendary havens for prostitution and hangouts for the local mafia, who would squander tens of thousands of dollars in a night. Even kung-fu Hollywood star Chuck Norris owned a casino in the basement of one of the “seven sisters” Stalin-era skyscrapers at Barikadnaya in central Moscow.

President Vladimir Putin ordered the gambling ban after the Interior Ministry linked several gaming operations in Moscow to Georgian organised crime.

Now the authorities in Minsk believe that even more liberal gambling regulations, recently adopted by the government, can be controlled and will not lead to massive growth in online casinos in Belarus in the near future, Deputy Tax and Duties Minister Vladimir Mukvich told journalists on August 21.

The legislation allows for virtual gambling, which will be legalised in Belarus starting from April 2019, when the basic norms of the decree come into force.

Taking into account experience around the world, the ministry assumes that there will only be a few online casinos. "We cannot say that there will be a large number of them in 2019-2020. We do not see any preconditions for such a trend," state news agency BELTA quoted Mukvich as saying.

Earlier, Minsk had high hopes for attracting Russian gamblers following the 2009 ban on gambling almost everywhere, except the four specially arranged zones in the Altai, Krasnodar, Kaliningrad, and Primorsky regions.

However, Belarus has failed to attract a significant number of Russian gamblers, mainly due to the fact that in endemically corrupt Russia gambling continues working despite the ban, with operations masquerading as internet cafes, lottery clubs, and so forth.

According to the Belarusian Tax and Duties Ministry, Minsk is interested in preventing online gambling from become a monopolistic activity and expects applicants to be able to fulfil the requirements for organising online casinos.

Specifically, betting offices that accept bets online will need a new licence (the rules do not change for those who work with fixed cash registers). A transitional period for such offices will be provided through to April 2021.

The new regulations also envisage strict requirements for online gamblers taking into account the specific nature of the activity. The protection of the personal data of online casino players is another area of importance, according to Mukvich.

The new rules envisage the certification of security systems, which can cost a lot. "This will be done not for minimising the number of such facilities but for providing maximum protection to players," the deputy minister explained.