The scandal is the latest in a series that have cast a pall over the ruling Socialist Party, ahead of local elections in October.

Of late, the government has moved to mend its image. A group of financial, legal and crime experts have been huddled at the Interior Ministry drafting a bill to stem illegal gambling in Greece, which has the highest incidence of gambling in the 15-nation European Union, according to a Finance Ministry spokesman.

While the bill is being worked up, there are also *serious considerations* being given to setting up a task force to lead the crackdown, the official said.

But there are reservations, too.

*The problem,* said Dimitris Batzelis, secretary general of Greece's Financial Crime Bureau, *isn't enforcing the gaming ban. It's clarifying what the ban will in fact ban.*

Under Greek law, gambling is prohibited outside licensed casinos.

But in the last two months, more than 750 arcade owners have been arrested, fined and slapped with three-month prison sentences for converting slot machines so they pay out cash instead of bonus playing time.

In all, 200,000 unlicensed gambling machines operate nationwide, costing the cash-strapped country an estimated $5 million daily in lost revenue, according to government officials.

Still, the prime minister's decision to scrap all electronic games — even Pac-Man and Tetris — has some legal experts doubting its constitutionality.

Even state officials like Mr. Batzelis of the crime bureau warned that a blanket ban was *no panacea* for the country's gambling epidemic.

*The ban will not wipe out illegal gambling in its entirety,* he said in a telephone interview. *It's just a cosmetic fix.*

Government foot-dragging in putting forward legislation, meanwhile, has given gamblers time to move their operations underground, while innovative arcade owners, according to the police, have begun replacing slot machines with computer screens, affording high-rollers the taste of online gambling.

More than 90 percent of Greeks questioned in a recent poll published in the daily Eleftherotypia said the ban was doomed.

*Not only is it ridiculous,* said Pavlos Dimitriou, 51, a salesman playing a game of Tetris at an arcade in central Athens, *it's an audacious move coming from a crowd of crooked politicians.*

Mr. Simitis decreed the ban after Alekos Chrysanthakopoulos, a Socialist deputy and head of an ad-hoc parliamentary committee on gambling, was filmed by a television crew in January playing video poker at an unlicensed den in western Greece.

Then, a week later, snapshots of a senior minister, George Paschalides, seated in the cozy company of a reputed gambling baron, were splashed across the front pages of national newspapers.

The gambling scandal comes at a precarious time for the ruling party, known as Pasok.

Since its re-election two years ago, the Socialist administration has been dogged by a string of scandals, including its messy management of preparations for the Athens Games in 2004 and murky financial dealings with a telecommunications executive.

With municipal elections set for later this year, Pasok's political nemesis, the conservative New Democracy Party, has hinted at the need for an Italian-style *Clean Hands* anticorruption campaign. But not a single lawmaker has put forth special legislation to that effect.

*There are more than enough laws out there to fight this,* said a political analyst, Theodore Kouloumbis. *It's all about making a qualitative leap forward in Greece's backward political culture.*

After all, Mr. Simitis himself placed that bet six years ago when he nudged the Socialist leader, Andreas Papandreou, who was in failing health, and his corrupt coterie out of office.

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