Casino operator Donaco International says operations at its flagship Cambodian gaming venue have slowed to a crawl due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Wednesday, the Australian-listed Donaco informed investors that the company had decided to close “most of” the hotel at its Star Vegas casino in Poipet, near the border with Thailand. The border with Thailand has been closed for two weeks and the Thai government said Tuesday that it would remain closed until at least April 5.

Donaco said total casino visitation to Star Vegas had averaged 2,430 players per day over the first 22 days of March, down around 15% from the first 22 days of February. However, Donaco noted that its VIP gambling turnover had risen 9% over the same span, suggesting that, while traffic may have slowed, high-roller traffic remains healthy.

Regardless, Donaco has arranged unpaid leave for many Star Vegas employees for March and April, while also reducing total headcount and deferring some ‘capital expenditure projects.’ Chairman Mel Ashton said the company “very much” regretted the layoffs but it was “a necessary decision for the current environment.”

UK betting and casino operators will get some financial relief from the government after all, according to the local industry association.

On Wednesday, the Betting & Gaming Council (BGC) issued a statement welcoming “confirmation that our members will qualify for a business rates holiday like all other businesses in the retail, leisure and hospitality industry.”

Last week, the BGC lamented the revelation that betting shops and casinos were somehow ineligible to apply for the government’s plan to exempt retail and hospitality businesses from paying business rates for a year. The rates relief was intended to lessen the financial fallout from the reduction in business volume caused by the mounting COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

That ineligibility looked even less justifiable after the government ordered the closure of all non-essential ‘social venues’ last Friday, including betting shops, bingo halls and casinos. But sanity has apparently returned (if only temporarily) to parliament, and the BGC welcomed its members’ inclusion in the government’s “unprecedented response to the threat posed to millions of jobs from the coronavirus.”

PokerStars founder Isai Scheinberg has pled guilty to illegal gambling in a New York court, setting up the end of the nearly decade-long Black Friday saga.

On Wednesday, Geoffrey Berman, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that Scheinberg had entered a plea of guilty to a single count of operating an illegal gambling business. Scheinberg faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison when he’s sentenced later by US District Judge Lewis Kaplan at a later date.

In January, news broke that the 73-year-old Scheinberg had surrendered to US authorities after being arrested in Switzerland last June. Scheinberg initially chose to fight extradition before agreeing to come to New York to face the music.

Scheinberg’s plea comes nearly nine years after he was indicted on federal charges of illegal gambling, bank fraud and money laundering related to the April 15, 2011 online poker crackdown by US authorities. Scheinberg told the court that he knew PokerStars was operating in defiance of US law but opted to continue operating his insanely profitable business (for some unstated and inexplicable reason).

Latvia’s online gambling operators say the government’s decision to ban online gambling as part of its pandemic response could result in lawsuits seeking significant financial compensation.

This week, Jānis Trēgers, head of the Latvian Association of Internet Gambling (LIAB), issued a statement slamming the government’s decision to include online gambling among the activities temporarily halted to minimize further spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Trēgers claimed the government’s decision was made contrary to any “economic logic.” Latvian-licensed online operators had already reported their average number of active gamblers falling by 26% following the government declaring a state of emergency on March 14 and Trēgers said “reducing the industry’s revenue to zero” would spell the death of the domestic online market.

Trēgers slammed Latvia’s parliamentarians for having “swiped a bold stripe over everything that had been done in Latvia to combat illegal gambling sites.” Said measures include prohibiting local financial institutions from processing payments on behalf of international gambling sites not holding a Latvian license and compelling internet service providers to block these sites’ domains.