MOSCOW, September 8 (RAPSI) – About a million slot machines have been seized at underground casinos in Russia over the past five years, the Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Monday.

Gambling, including at casinos, was banned in Russia on July 1, 2009, with the exception of four designated areas. Currently, there is one gambling area, on the border of the Krasnodar Territory and the Rostov Region in southern Russia. The other three areas are under construction in the Kaliningrad Region (on the Baltic Sea), the Altai Territory in south Siberia and the Primorye Territory on the Pacific Coast.

President Vladimir Putin signed a law in July setting up a gambling zone in Crimea and Sochi with its Winter Olympics venues.

Since gambling was banned in 2009, over 100,000 facilities were inspected, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office.

As a result, they closed over 70,000 illegal gambling facilities and 812 illegal casinos, and confiscated over 970,000 items of gambling equipment, the office said in a statement.

Fines totaling more than 684 million rubles ($18.5 million) have been imposed on the heads of these facilities. Over 115 million rubles ($3.1 million) have been collected to the federal budget by court orders. Criminal proceedings were initiated in 1,664 cases.

The statement reads that illegal gambling involves the use of special hardware and software, online resources and betting shops.