About this app
How to play Santas Inn
The GMI, know locally as EEE, is described as a “residual payment to guarantee and legal minimum income for all residents”.
Anyone residing in Cyprus, with income not high enough to support their basic needs, is eligible for the benefit.
Cyprus is not the first market to consider whether to block its welfare recipients from using their benefits to gamble, Brazil introduced a similar ban in 2025.
About Santas Inn
Particularly concerning to Kesitilwe is the amount of gambling advertising in sports-related content.
“At a break or at half time you see 10 to 20 [gambling] adverts,” he says. “It’s come to a point that oftentimes I even hear my kids singing [gambling adverts]. They’ll just keep asking, ‘But Daddy, what is this? What does this mean?’
“Our position is unequivocal. Betting is an adult activity. Operators must maintain effective age verification, marketing must not target or appeal to children and regulators; parents, schools and communities must reinforce the same message.”
What is Santas Inn?
Grasso was quick to defend Rovito following his arrest, describing him as “a stellar corporate and residential citizen” who has “a YouTube following of a quarter of a million people or something like that.”
Rovito, meanwhile, was such a fan of the mayor that he named a dish after him— “Linguini alla Mayor Grasso”—a pasta that comes with “fresh tomato sauce and basil, tossed with a touch of olive oil, and topped with fresh ricotta.”
In an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune in June, Grasso complained that “some members of the Chicago news media stigmatize Italian Americans as Outfit members or mafia operatives whenever it serves to embellish a story.”