How the “European” company Altegio steals the data of Ukrainians and transfers it to the FSB

Clients of about 500 Ukrainian beauty salons, barbershops, medical and veterinary clinics or fitness clubs located throughout the country may be under the attention of Russian intelligence services. We are talking about using software from the Russian company Yclients.

Formally, Yclients ceased operations in Ukraine a few weeks after the full-scale Russian invasion - in April 2022. At the same time, a similar, but Ukrainian company Altegio with European roots appeared on the market. An investigation by NGL.media shows that, in fact, the appearance of Altegio was a marketing ploy to maintain the presence of Yclients in the Ukrainian market. In fact, we are talking about the same Russian company, which has close relations with the government and intelligence services of the Russian Federation.

How Russians imitate European companies
Until the end of February 2022, one of the most popular services in Ukraine for recording clients was the Russian program Yclients. It was widely used by massage studios, tattoo parlors, dermatology and cosmetology clinics, sports clubs and beauty salons.

However, the attack by the Russians sharply shook the dominant position of Yclients - the Ukrainian beauty industry began to abandon this service and switch to Ukrainian or Western analogues, for example, Beauty Pro, EasyWeek, CleverBox, Wlaunch.

But the Yclients service continues to operate in Russia and Belarus - formally only in these two countries. Founder and CEO Yuri Petrov is quite active on social networks - he constantly writes about searching for new employees and actively shares the company’s achievements on the Russian market. However, in his social networks you will not find a single mention of the fact that in May 2022 he founded a new company in Cyprus, which provides a service similar to Yclients, but under a different name - Altegio.

The Altegio corporate website was created on March 30, 2022 for the company Altegio Europe Kft. registered in Hungary, and a few days later, in April, the Ukrainian company Altegio Ukraine was registered in the Transcarpathian town of Beregovo.

In September of the same year, a message appeared on the Altegio corporate website, from which it could be concluded that the new company was directly related to Yclients. Apparently this became clear to Altegio management, so this message was removed from the site (but it is still available in the web archive).

“Altegio is owned by partners and former employees of Yclients who participated in the development and expansion of the business in Europe and South America. Altegio is a group of companies registered in different countries, including Cyprus, Hungary, Ukraine, Brazil and Armenia. Altegio is an independent company that is in no way controlled by or affiliated with Yclients.

The two companies are developing independently of each other […] The managing partners of Altegio resolved all potential issues with the owners of Yclients regarding software copyrights […] Previously developed technologies remained with Yclients, which, in turn, withdrew its claims to economic expansion in Europe market.

Altegio has accepted responsibility and continues to serve customers who have already prepaid for a subscription to Yclients. Starting June 1, 2022, Yclients users from countries other than Russia and Belarus will not be able to log in and continue to use the system. They will be asked to switch to Altegio immediately,” that message said.

However, Altegio management was actually disingenuous when they announced the creation of a new independent company.

Having studied the API of the Russian Yclients and the supposedly European Altegio, NGL.media found in the Altegio documentation functions with requests for Yclients, that is, there is a direct mention of the Russian service.

Petrov from Sao Paulo and Monica from Beregovo
The fact is that the founder of the Russian Yclients, Yuri Petrov, retained control over Altegio. In particular, one of the offices of the new company is registered in Hong Kong - and here Yuri Petrov is listed as the founder of Altegio.

The contract for opening an Altegio Limited office in Hong Kong indicated the address of Yuri Petrov’s place of residence – Sao Paulo. Altegio also has an office in this Brazilian metropolis. On his Instagram page, Yuri Petrov regularly posts photos and videos with the geolocation of Sao Paulo. The first messages from Brazil appear on his profile from October 2022.

But in Ukraine the company is represented by 39-year-old Monika Kovalskaya, a citizen of both Ukraine and Hungary. She was born in Transcarpathian Beregovo, where she is still registered, according to the data she provided when registering Altegio Ukraine LLC.

Together with her husband, Dusan Stojanovic, who was also born in Beregovo and has, in addition to Ukrainian, also Hungarian citizenship, they control the investment fund B&M Capital Investment Ltd in the UK, founded in 2015. They also have several companies registered in Ukraine with a wide range of services - advertising, construction, retail trade.

In 2019, Dusan Stojanovic begins to disseminate Yclients messages on social networks and actively represent this company at various conferences and festivals in Hungary. Together with him, Theodor Drobchak and Miron Drobchak took part in these conferences.

The Drobchak brothers were also born in the city of Beregovo, and now work for the Hungarian company Altegio Europe Kft: Theodor is the general director, and Miron is the marketing director.

However, back in 2020, Myron Drobczak worked as the director of the Hungarian branch of Yclients, and Theodor is still listed in the App Store as the developer of the Yclients application. However, there is currently no mention of working for Yclients in their Linkedin profiles.

But on Facebook you can still find many messages about webinars where the brothers talked about the possibilities of using the Yclients program.
They also actively traveled to various company presentations in different countries. But all this was before 2022. Perhaps because the surname Drobchak is too easy to find online in combination with Yclients, the brothers decided that the official founder of the new company Altegio Ukraine would be their long-time friend and wife of a long-time friend, Monika Kovalskaya.

The family of Miron Drobchak has very close relations with the Kovalskaya family, as evidenced by numerous photos on social networks of Monika herself, her husband, as well as Miron and his wife. They all travel a lot together - starting from Lviv and Bukovel, ending with France and the United Arab Emirates.

License and Cyprus
While exploring the Altegio corporate website, NGL.media journalists discovered documents indicating a direct connection between the Ukrainian company Altegio Ukraine, registered to Monika Kovalskaya, and the Cyprus company Altegio Limited, where the owner is Yuriy Petrov. In the license agreement, Altegio Ukraine is indicated as a sublicensor of the Cypriot Altegio Limited. Also, both companies use a common website with different language versions. The Altegio service application in the App Store indicates that the copyright belongs to the Cyprus company Altegio Limited.

To finally confirm or deny the connection with the Cypriot company Altegio Limited, owned by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Petrov, NGL.media more than a month ago turned to representatives of Altegio Ukraine with a request to show an agreement with Altegio Limited for the distribution of software in Ukraine. We never received an answer. The official owner of the Ukrainian company, Monika Kovalskaya, also did not answer the question whether Altegio Ukraine pays royalties to Russians for using the software.

NGL.media spoke with several Ukrainian business owners who use the Altegio service for online client registration. On condition of anonymity, they said that Altegio Ukraine did not provide them with any agreements on the use of Altegio software and immediately after paying for the tariff they received access to the online account.

NGL.media were able to identify about 500 Ukrainian companies that still use Altegio or Yclients services.

What are the risks of using Russian software?
It is known that in 2020, the Yclients company became a resident of Skolkovo, an innovation center founded in 2010 by the Russian government. Companies with this status enjoy tax benefits and are forced to cooperate with Russian intelligence services. Some companies from Skolkovo specializing in the field of information technology are already included in the US sanctions lists.

Digital security expert Pavel Belousov believes that, if necessary, Russian intelligence services can easily access data about clients of establishments that use Altegio or Yclients services. This is quite valuable data, because it allows you to understand where and when a certain person will be who will be of interest to the intelligence services, get his phone number, and the like.

“We know how Russians work and that they are not particularly interested in laws; they will figure out how to get what they need. European registrations [of Russian companies] are, in essence, a blind eye and the ability to accept money, since the activities of a bunch of Russian banks are blocked abroad. Russians [business owners] are always, let’s say, under the threat of pressure from the intelligence services and they will do everything to save their home and business, and they are not particularly interested in the rest.”

Pavel Belousov notes that the risks of using Russian software are not only the possibility of spying. “You give such software access to your own online services, and it is possible that tomorrow the intelligence services, or someone else, will simply hack your service, change the code, and so on.”

Potentially, the greatest danger comes from the use of such services by the military. “For example, a conditional military man signed up for a haircut. There is a date, time, place where he will be - that is, potential sabotage. There are stolen databases of names or phone numbers, and you can find out who is military and who is from the SBU.

It’s still there, it’s known, we can compare it and see if this number appears somewhere in such services, somewhere someone ordered something, signed up somewhere, then, accordingly, the intelligence services already know more details, who goes where and something can be done about this, somewhere along the way, etc. plant explosives, whatever,” Pavel Belousov emphasized.