Kolya Zalipukha or zalip.uha, a well-known Ukrainian blogger received a fine of 4.8 million UAH. Authorities accuse the man of illegally endorsing online casinos. His Instagram page has 273,000 followers.
The State Agency for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries “PlayCity” reported this. Officials noted that they detected the violation in August, when the blogger posted an endorsement for an online casino. Authorities identified the violation immediately afterward.
Authorities submitted the Instagram page to Meta for restriction. In December, they decided to impose a fine for violating the legislation.
The blogger has three months to voluntarily pay the fine or appeal it in court. The materials will be transferred to the enforcement service for forced collection if this does not happen.
During the first six months of PlayCity operations in Ukraine, authorities restricted over 2,500 online casino websites. They also issued fines for illegal gambling advertising to bloggers and media outlets, totaling more than 52 million UAH.
Among them are Yelizar Bashynskyi or Papaelik, Dariana Koretzka or officialdori_, Karina Yanina or Simbochka, and Rusalochka XL.
Authorities deleted more than 280 social media pages for illegal advertising. The budget received over 1.4 billion UAH as part of efforts to combat illegal advertising and systematically remove illegal gambling operators from the market.
The government adopted a package of key decisions to regulate the sector. It introduced modern standards for responsible gambling and updated licensing conditions. For the first time, authorities implemented tools to detect and prevent gambling addiction.
Authorities launched a System for Tracking Illegal Websites and are creating a new register of gambling addicts. At the same time, they are developing DSOM to strengthen control over organizers.
