How did the NBU entrust the license to the scandalous EasyPay of the Avramenko brothers?

Financial Company Contract House LLC, servicing EasyPay, received a license to provide payment services, despite scandals with drugs and money laundering from gambling.

Open sources say that the owners of EasyPay Alexey and Anton Avramenko probably received such trust from the state thanks to their acquaintances: Sergey Savchuk, head of the Department of Methodology for Regulating the Activities of Non-Bank Financial Institutions of the NBU, and Natalia Lapko, Director of the Department of Payment Systems of the NBU.

In 2024, the National Bank canceled the registration of participation of FC ELAENS LLC in payment systems. This is a company that, in accordance with the Payment Infrastructure Register, is an indirect participant in the international payment systems Visa and MasterCard and operates under the “Fondy” brand. The reason for this cancellation is information received from law enforcement agencies that the activities of FC ELAINS LLC contain risks of threats to the national security of Ukraine. However, this is not the only payment system in Ukraine that requires close attention.

Back on May 9, 2023, the National Bank of Ukraine reported on the companies included in the Payment Infrastructure Register. And among those who received a license to provide payment services, there is LLC “Fincompany “Kontraktovy Dom”, which services EasyPay and has the same owners - Alexey and Anton Avramenko.

However, this company not so long ago, in 2022, was involved in the case of IBOX Bank, whose activities were discontinued due to a scandal about accepting payments for gambling. Then the NBU exposed the companies, which were essentially fictitious, since most of them had one employee. These companies did not have paid-up authorized capital, assets and revenues and did not have an open account with other banks. However, IBOX Bank changed the purpose of payments for these companies (miscoding) and classified such transactions as sports poker bets, then these funds were transferred to large bookmaking companies.

But at the end of this chain there are self-service terminals through which these funds were transferred to the accounts of fictitious enterprises. And among these operators there is EasyPay (operator – LLC “Finkompaniya “Kontraktovy Dom”).

What other dubious transactions are likely to be paid through EasyPay?

According to the TG channel “Joker”, payments for drugs, weapons and other illegal transactions are allegedly actively made through EasyPay. In addition, EasyPay successfully occupied the niche of gambling after GlobalMoney exited the market. However, the owners of EasyPay actively deny these accusations.

But an analysis of open sources indicates that the Joker resource has good grounds for its accusations. After all, back in 2019, a petition was registered on the President’s website demanding that EasyPay be closed due to payments related to drug trafficking.

And although the petition did not receive the appropriate number of votes then, some persistent journalists went even further and analyzed the Register of Court Decisions. It turned out that in cases of drug trafficking, the EasyPay system was mentioned most often - out of 480 convictions, in 113 cases payments were made through EasyPay. This is also common in news reports about drug busts. You didn’t even have to go far for information. You just have to type the word EasyPay into a Google search engine, and it will immediately find similar information.

Who patronizes Avramenko?

According to information from the same Joker, Easy Soft LLC allegedly provides cover in the NBU for the sale of drugs and the use of drop cards through EasyPay,

which belongs to the Avramenko brothers, Alexey and Anton, Sergey Savchuk, head of the Department of Methodology for Regulating the Activities of Non-Bank Financial Institutions of the National Bank. So Avramenko, who has a dubious reputation and significant debts, has known Sergei Savchuk since their student days.

It was probably thanks to Savchuk that Financial Company Contract House LLC, which provides the operation of EasyPay, which is also owned by Anton and Alexey Avramenko, received a license to conduct financial transactions.

Otherwise, questions arise as to how the company could obtain such a license. Let us recall that Avramenko’s father Vladimir was once the owner of the bankrupt Trust bank, and received, as they say, a “black mark” from the NBU. In the language of bankers, this is what they call an impeccable business reputation.

There is also information from open sources that Natalya Lapko, director of the NBU payment systems department, may have helped in this matter. And her son Alexander Lapko once worked as CTO of EasyPay Group.

Is the EasyPay service safe and the unpleasant trail of quasi-republics

So if in the case with Trust Bank it can be said that children are not responsible for their parents, then information about the activities of the AVK company in the occupied part of the Donetsk region, of which Avramenko Sr. was the beneficiary, is at least alarming.

Although “AVK” allegedly stopped working in 2015, already in 2017 its products were suddenly discovered in “DPR” and “LPR” stores, and it itself was registered with the “tax authorities” of these so-called republics as a large “payer” taxes." True, then for some reason the matter quickly hushed up. And today the company is in a state of termination, and bankruptcy proceedings have been going on for it for 8 years.

So what can be annoying about the payment system? EasyPay carries out payments to government agencies under the “State in a Smartphone” program, also has a service for paying for travel in public transport in several large cities, accepts utility payments and services of central administrative centers and Service Centers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. That is, it serves about 20 million Ukrainians. Let’s imagine how much data the system can receive and store about each user. So, taking into account all of the above, it becomes somewhat alarming about the fate of this information, but everyone has their own conclusions.

StopCor analysts personally contacted Anton Avramenko and Sergey Savchuk on social networks, and also sent a request to Kontraktovy Dom Financial Company LLC, NBU and BEB to clarify the information.