Thailand's Thaksin bullish on legalising online gambling, crypto

14/1/2025 15:07

Thailand's political heavyweight Thaksin Shinawatra believes Southeast Asia's second largest economy should push to legalise online gambling, which he said could net the government as much as 100 billion baht ($2.89 billion) in annual revenues.



Speaking at an event in Bangkok late on Monday, just hours after the Thai cabinet approved a draft law to legalise casinos, Thaksin said the government was coming up with ways to control access to, and tax revenue from, online gambling.



Thaksin said, "Online gambling has two to four million Thai users with savings of 300 billion baht and gains and losses of about 500 billion per year."



He said, "If we can tax 20% ... we would get more than 100 billion per year."



While most forms of gambling are illegal in Thailand, it is hugely popular and successive governments led or backed by Thaksin have pushed to legalise it to create jobs and boost tourism, arguing huge sums of money are being lost that can be turned into state revenue.



Thaksin said, the government was working on an identification system to control access to online gaming that would prevent underage use and allow the monitoring of gambling addicts.