Thursday, April 25, 2002 | 11:13 a.m.
LIMA, Peru -- Peru's Congress approved a law banning casinos starting Jan. 1, 2005, after legislators said the casinos weren't providing tax revenue and were encouraging gambling, El Comercio daily said.
Congress approved the law with a 35-33 vote and 16 abstentions, the paper said.
"We discovered that slot machine houses and informal casinos weren't paying any taxes and that formal casinos would pay just 50 percent of them," said legislator Jorge Mufarech, of the government's Possible Peru party, according to the paper.
Casinos, which were banned throughout the 1970s and 1980s, were authorized in the early 1990s during the first term of former President Alberto Fujimori. Hundreds of casinos have been opened in Lima and in several other cities.
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