The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan, Olzhas Bektenov, provided insights into the measures taken against gambling addiction and illegal gambling businesses in response to a parliamentary inquiry. The data covers the period from October 2025 to June 2026.
Key statistics include:
- 402,000 gambling-related payment transactions worth over $10.9 million were blocked by second-tier banks from October 2025 to March 2026.
- 110 payment providers are included in the government-sanctioned list of foreign online casino operators, with banks blocking transfers to these providers.
- 15 criminal cases have been initiated by law enforcement regarding 40 instances of online casino organization since the beginning of 2026.
- 11 leaders and employees of financial organizations that aided illegal casinos have been detained by authorities.
- 1,144 bank cards belonging to drop players have been blocked, with 10 pre-trial investigations ongoing regarding drop betting under Article 232-1 of the Criminal Code of Kazakhstan.
- 62,000 websites of illegal iGaming operators were blocked from January to May 2026 (20,000 for all of 2024, 75,000 for 2025), with 34,000 identified by the Unified Accounting System (UAS).
Unified Accounting System (UAS):
- All active betting operators have connected to the system.
- 433,000 users were identified by the system from March 27 to June 7.
- 135,000 of these users were denied access to gambling.
- 116,000 are listed in the debtor registry.
- 15,000 previously self-restricted their access to gambling.
- 4,000 fell under other restrictions.
Notably, 86% of the denials by the UAS were directed at individuals from the debtor registry. In the initial months of operation, the system, launched in March 2026, denied access to gambling for nearly one-third of identified users and identified over half of the websites blocked in 2026.