Poland bans online casinos but that is not the real issue

Poland is banning online casinos and is removing thousands of slot machines from bars and other public places, in fact the only place Poles will be able to gamble is in the land based casinos but some suggest that this is not the real issue and is being used to divert attention from the real issue of widespread corruption of the Government. It all started when the government wanted to introduce a bill that would increase taxes for the gambling industry but suddenly there was a group lobbying against it and after investigation it was found that the lobbyists were accepting bribes. Last month Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, fired the head of the Central Anti Corruption Bureau and on the same day the Justice Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Deputy Economics Minister all resigned after being implicated in the scandal and this on top of the resignation of the Sports Minister and the head of the governments civic platform who had his phone tapped while talking with gambling industry leaders. A spokesman from the Institute of Public Affairs said “Tusk hasn’t engaged himself in the scandal. He got rid of those closest to the scandal, but there wasn’t a thorough cleaning up of his entire party”, “He covered the problem of corruption with the problem of gambling”

Most Poles are aware of the corruption and doubt that much will be done this time to clean it up but in the meantime they are stuck with no online gambling.