WHO IS THE RINGLEADER OF THE ONE-ARMED BANDIT?

I am defending the owner of the bar against a fine for organising gambling.

Law cannot and should not be made in haste, nor should it be made sloppily. Unfortunately, however, this is not the case. This is particularly not the case when politicians rush into law in response to scandals and irregularities. Such a far flawed law was passed years ago in response to the so-called gambling scandal. The Gambling Act adopted in 2009 prohibited, among other things, the operation of games of chance machines (commonly referred to as ‘one-armed bandits’) outside gambling casinos and without a licence. The Act provided for severe penalties for breaching the ban, but did not adequately define what the term ‘gaming arrangement’ actually means, moreover, what permitted scope of activity would not be considered as ‘gaming arrangement’.

The other day I was approached by the owner of a small bar on the outskirts of a Silesian town. She had a customs inspection which revealed that a pair of “one-armed bandits” were operating in the bar, which was clearly not a casino. The unfortunate owner was fined PLN 12,000 for each ‘bandit’. The officers of the Customs Chamber were not convinced by the client’s explanations. She mentioned that the vending machines were not her property, being the property of a tenant. This tenant rented two square metres of the floor inside the bar from her for a small rent (in the order of PLN 200 per month) , placing his “bandits” on the rented space. The rent was set at a fixed amount in the nature of a lump sum, in no way linked to the amount of revenue that the machines generated for the tenant. The client did not co-organise with the tenant – the “front man” – the game on the “bandits”.

Under the agreement, she was required to provide access to electricity, without which the machines could not operate. It was only as a courtesy – as the contract did not commit her to do so – that she informed the tenant if the ‘bandits’ broke down or needed to be emptied of their chips. The Client’s only connection with the operation of the machines (apart from the collection of rent for the lease of a part of the bar area) was a certain making of the bar thus run more attractive – from now on, its customers, apart from playing darts or buying beer, could additionally pull the lever of the “bandit”. It was therefore doubtful to recognise that the customer, together with (or alongside) the tenant, organised games of chance. Such a conclusion was contradicted by the linguistic meaning of the term “arrange (a game)”, and the Gambling Act did not offer a separate meaning of the term – deviating from the colloquial meaning.

Appealing against the decision of the head of the customs office to impose penalties seemed a natural and obvious reaction. In supporting the appeal, I pointed to the results of the so-called systemic interpretation and the overall analysis of the provisions of the Act. First, under the provisions providing for criminal sanctions (the Criminal Code and the Misdemeanour Code), a person who knowingly facilitates unlicensed gambling (for example by lending or renting premises for an “illegal casino”) may only be liable as an accessory to the principal offender, who is the person illegally organising ice games. Thus, such a person (the lending pub landlord) cannot at the same time be seen as the person “arranging” the game. Furthermore, also the very wording of the provisions of the Gaming Act, providing for certain requirements, obligations and rights of the person arranging the games, is of such a nature that it cannot cover persons who do not organise or operate a casino, but only provide a room for this purpose. The appeal, however, not only failed to have the desired effect, but was not even duly considered. The Director of the Customs Chamber did not even address the arguments presented in the appeal, contenting himself with merely presenting once again, without any deeper legal explanation, the position (which was fought against as erroneous by the appeal) that renting space for slot machines as ‘creating the conditions for participation in gambling’ is the same as ‘arranging’ such games within the meaning of the Act.

The dispute was resolved years later, only at the administrative court level. The amended provisions of the Act were already in force at the time, explicitly extending liability for the operation of gambling machines outside gaming casinos also to persons who – not arranging the games themselves – only rented and lent space for the installation of the “bandits”. Based on those premises, and others, the administrative court assessed that the legislator itself in a way acknowledged the wrongful punishment of persons leasing or renting space or premises for the alleged “organisation of games”. If the legislator’s original intention had been to give the term “organiser of games” such a broad meaning as the customs authorities claimed, the amendment of the legislation (made in the direction of extending liability beyond the circle of “organisers of games” in the strict sense) would have been unnecessary.

In the end, the client narrowly succeeded: the wrongly imposed penalties were overturned by an administrative court ruling. However, she “lost” as a citizen, just like the rest of us: being forced to fight for several years against a sloppy and imprecise law, in addition to the tax authorities interpreting their powers expansively. The way a citizen operates in a maze of sloppy legislation is similar to playing … roulette. Whereas you can sometimes win, but more often you will lose.