page_title: Gambling in Cambodia
section_title: Casino industry
hierarchical_section_title: Gambling in Cambodia / Casino industry
caption_attribution_description: English: Casino and street scape, Poipet, Cambodia
context_page_description: Gambling in Cambodia is officially illegal under the 1996 Law on Suppression of Gambling, which outlawed all unauthorized forms of gambling and provided for penalties ranging from monetary fines to short prison sentences, although the Cambodian government's General Department of Prisons does not list gambling as one of the 28 offenses punishable by imprisonment.
  The prohibition on gambling, which also extends to all forms of online gambling, only applies to Cambodian citizens. As of October 2015, there were 75 casinos catering to foreign tourists operating within Cambodia, providing an estimated US$29 million in revenue to the national government in the first nine months of the year and $2 billion in income for the casinos. Cambodian citizens are allowed to gamble through government sponsored gaming including five separate privately run national lotteries. Cambodians were also previously permitted to play the slot machines located in the nation's casinos, however due to complaints of violence related to gambling debts and widespread problem gambling, slot machines were banned in 2009.
context_section_description: Gambling is illegal in all of the countries sharing borders with Cambodia. Communist governments in Vietnam and Laos ban gambling and the strict Buddhist cultures of Thailand and Myanmar also prohibit gaming. Beginning in the late 1990s, Cambodia has been building a casino industry to capitalize on this, constructing casinos in border towns and popular resort areas and enticing foreign gamblers while officially prohibiting its own citizens from entering. In border towns such as Poipet, O Smach and Bavet there are "casino strips" between border checkpoints so that foreign nationals may cross the border to gamble then return home without officially passing through the Cambodian checkpoint, thereby eliminating the need for visas. In popular tourist resort areas, such as Koh Kong and Sihanoukville, casinos are open to anybody with a foreign passport and the largest casino in the country, Phnom Penh's Naga Casino, which has exclusive gaming rights within a 200 kilometer radius of the capital, has plans to operate a charter service to fly in wealthy customers from China.
  Cambodia's casino industry continues to grow. In 2011 US$20 million in tax revenue was generated. In 2014, 57 casinos provided an estimated $25 million in revenue to the national government, while in the first nine months of 2015, 75 casinos, with ten new establishments licensed in the third quarter alone, were responsible for $29 million in government revenue and $2 billion in income for casino owners, most of which are foreign investment companies.
caption: Grand Diamond City casino at the Poipet Thai border checkpoint
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