It’s all part of a Kremlin crusade to clean up a country that has long had a fascination with games of chance.
It deprives the federal budget of billions of dollars a year in taxes, while leaving more than 400,000 people without work.
Michael Boettcher, the British founder of Storm International said: “It’s like closing all the five-star restaurants in London because you’re eating too much, and saying that if you do want to have them, you’ll have to relocate to North Wales,”.
When the gambling law was introduced in 2006, many wondered whether the Kremlin would actually follow through on its threat to pack the $3.6 billion a year gambling industry off to Siberia.