The head of the Verkhovna Rada’s tax committee, Danilo Getmantsev, criticized the Ministry of Digital Transformation for failing to meet the deadlines for launching the state online monitoring of gambling, reports Economic Truth. Getmantsev complained on Telegram that the tender for the development of the State Online Monitoring System (SOM) of gambling was announced only yesterday, September 2.
“And this means that the system’s launch deadline of September 30 has been disrupted. It was disrupted intentionally. In a deal with gamblers interested in working in the shadows. Thus, despite all our efforts, the state and the army will continue to receive billions under the silent approval of gamblers. I am convinced that the head of the body, Novikov, who previously had a sad experience working in KRAIL, as well as the supervising ministry, must bear political responsibility for this disruption,” the MP wrote. SOM is a comprehensive IT platform for controlling bets and winnings in real time.
Online monitoring should make the financial flows of the gambling business transparent to the state. Regulators will see the movement of each bet and payout, so gambling organizers will no longer be able to hide profits and evade taxes. According to the Ministry of Digital Economy, without this control, Ukraine loses up to UAH 10 billion in revenue every year due to the shadow casino market. Hetmantsev additionally criticized the Ministry of Digital Economy for its lack of will to stop the “shadow sector” in gambling.
“We overestimated the reformist power of the Ministry of Digital Economy and their will to put an end to the shadow in the gambling industry. Mykhailo (Fedorov, – ed.) and the guys obviously played a not cheap PR game by changing photos in the Diya, instead of ensuring market transparency and counteracting thieves,” Hetmantsev wrote.
Let us recall that KRAIL, in 3 years of its work, was unable to develop a State System for Online Gambling Monitoring.
On February 14, the Cabinet of Ministers officially assigned the Ministry of Digital Transformation the functions of a gambling market regulator. The State Agency for Gambling “PlayCity” was created on the basis of the ministry, which replaced KRAL in March 2025 and took over all its tasks.
