Ukraine selects chief for new gambling regulator
Novikov Gennadiy Olegovich to step in after working on corruption prevention in the country since January 2020
The Ukrainian government has appointed senior civil servant Novikov Gennadiy Olegovich as the chief of the country’s newly established gambling regulator, PlayCity.
The appointment was confirmed by the government in a Telegram post yesterday, 8 April.
PlayCity was unveiled in late March as the replacement for the previous regulator, KRAIL, which was dissolved as part of a refresh to Ukrainian gambling law.
Olegovich joins PlayCity after having served as head of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption since January 2020.
His tenure with the government body came to an end in January this year, during which time Olegovich was at the forefront of corruption disruption since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The new PlayCity chief previously served in the prosecutor’s office in Sumy in northeastern Ukraine between 2004 and 2012.
According to Ukrainian News Agency, he then worked in the national Prosecutor General’s Office across multiple facets, including criminal organisations, “maintenance of public prosecution” and “financial and economic interests of the state”.
While Olegovich will head up PlayCity, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, will have ultimate responsibility for the division.
PlayCity will utilise KRAIL’s former offices and be handed a 2025 budget of around £3m. The body will take on around 60 staff.
The establishment of PlayCity follows the dissolvement of KRAIL after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved updates to gambling legislation in December.
Other updates signed into law by the president included advertising bans during specific timeframes and the need for B2B licences in the market.
In December, the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation detained KRAIL CEO Ivan Rudyi over allegations he had supported Russia by not shutting down an operator with a Russian owner.