During the last two years, the authorities, through the Directorate of Casinos and Games of Chance (DCJA) of the Ministry of Finance, have closed 223 lottery banks that were operating illegally.
According to the institutional reports of said ministry, presented to the National Congress, in 2021 143 lottery seats were closed and in 2022, 80.
According to institutional reports, these businesses were closed during operations carried out with the participation of members of the Ministry of Defense and the National Police.
regularization
In February 2022, the government launched a Plan for the Regularization of lottery benches.
As a result of Decree 63-22, of February 9 of that year, which declared the regularization of the lottery benches that operate in the country, the authorities, through the Ministry of Finance, gave a 120-day term to businesses that sell draws for National Lottery tickets and pools and were operating outside the law.
Income
The Directorate of Casinos and Games of Chance analyzed a total of 2,935 requests for services from January to October 2021, through which the government obtained 890.3 million pesos for administrative fee collection.
While, during 2022, 2,081 requests for services were analyzed, for which it obtained income equivalent to 21.6 million pesos.
Of that amount, the State received 859,500 pesos for 489 requests received by lottery benches; 5.7 million pesos through 920 requests for sports benches and more than one million pesos through four requests for slot machine game rooms.
Likewise, the income amounting to more than 11.8 million pesos were obtained through 502 casino requests and more than 2.2 million pesos for 166 recreational bingo requests.
Through the investigations, during 2022, 6,981 pieces of equipment were seized, of which 2,831 were donated by the Ministry of Finance to different non-profit institutions.
On the other hand, between March-August 2022, 2,925 affidavits were received from 71,914 lottery banks, points of sale and/or agencies.