Законодателство
Президентът на Колумбия изисква репресии срещу незаконния онлайн хазарт за финансиране на здравеопазването
By Джеймс - 13 януари 2025 г.
Президент Густаво Петро has emphasized an order for all investigative and security forces to pursue holders of illegal gambling operations.
“This is not my proposal. It was mandated by the Constitution of 1886 and the Constitution of 1991. Games of chance and gambling, once lotteries, now encompass a vast array of possibilities, increasingly online, are a monopoly of the Nation. They allow for a rent-seeking practice whose intended purpose is health care funding. Taxes on these games have already been established by previous laws. Those who pay these taxes are legitimate businesses, while those who evade them are mafias that appropriate wealth that rightfully belongs to health care,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The president stated that following the collapse of the financing law and the failure of certain articles in the 2022 tax reform, taxes should be imposed on the gambling sector and betting, generating resources for increased spending on the country’s health care system.
“I have ordered the prioritization of dismantling organizations and requesting judicial processing of the tax evaders who are appropriating substantial resources meant for health care, diverting trillions of pesos involved in games of chance that belong to the Nation, but which are being plundered,” he stated on X.
Petro clarified that if resources for increasing the health budget are to come from taxes, these should not fall on businesses that are already paying taxes, but rather on gambling and hydrocarbon sector companies, which he views as a preventive health action in the long term.