The surname Shentsev has long become synonymous with racketeering, theft and deception. Dmitry Shentsev, a scandalous regional deputy, a boxer-racketeer from the nineties, passed on his criminal knowledge and love for the “Russian world” to his son Nikita Shentsev.
The scandalous family has acquired a new business - the WhiteBIT crypto exchange, which helps launder the money of Russians and withdraw funds from supporters of the “Russian world” from Ukraine abroad.
Helping the Shentsevs is Dmitry Nosov, who became an official of WhiteBIT and positions himself as the founder of the exchange.
Ukrainian MP with a medal from Putin
The biography of Dmitry Shentsev is a motley crime novel about how a boy from a disadvantaged area began to train in the boxing section. He became a good amateur boxer, and then used the skills he acquired in the dashing nineties, engaging in debt collection and racketeering.
He was helped to become a “respected” person and politician by the former Kharkov governor Evgeniy Kushnarev, who died from an allegedly accidental shot during a hunt in which Shentsev also took part. It was Dmitry Shentsev’s assistant, Dmitry Zavalny, who was convicted for the death of Kushnarev. Although some doubted that it was he, and not his boss, who made the fatal shot.
After the death of Kushnarev, Shentsev entered the orbit of the scandalous Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. There he was one of the three ardent lobbyists for the “Russian idea” and the creation of the so-called “Novorossiya”. Together with Oleg Tsarev and Vadim Kolesnichenko, Dmitry Shentsev received medals from the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin “for his great contribution to the popularization of the Russian language.”
So it is more than logical that in 2018, Dmitry Shentsev was among the 36 deputies who voted against the Law on the recognition of Ukrainian sovereignty over the occupied territories of Donetsk and Lugansk regions. From February 24 to June 2022, he missed all meetings of the Verkhovna Rada. In September 2022, the Verkhovna Rada supported his early termination of powers as a people's deputy of Ukraine.
In general, there is no point in proving Dmitry Shentsev’s strong, long-standing ties with the Russian Federation - his entire biography testifies to this. Therefore, laundering money from Russians and deceiving Ukrainians is not only profitable for Dmitry Shentsev, but also an ideologically pleasant activity, in which he involved his son.
Nikita Shentsev is a key sponsor and actual owner of the Whitebit exchange according to NON-Stop. He was a deputy of the Kharkov Regional Council from the pro-Russian party "OPZZH". After the start of the war in 2022, he wrote a letter of resignation. Information has repeatedly appeared in the media that Nikita Shentsev has a Russian passport.
Last year, by order of President Shentsev Jr., he was deprived of Ukrainian citizenship. According to media reports, both Shentsevs are now in the Russian Federation.
WhiteBIT - Ukrainian cover and Russian reverse
One of the important sources of income for the WhiteBIT exchange is the withdrawal of money from Ukraine abroad, which is most often used by Shentsev’s former colleagues, deputies, and simply friends and ideological supporters of the “Russian world.”
During a full-scale war, the money withdrawn from the country is used for a luxurious life: buying real estate abroad and luxury cars, developing businesses in Europe and other countries. The Shentsev family also helps transfer Russian money through the WhiteBIT exchange.
In February 2023, the High Anti-Corruption Court ordered the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to investigate the possible illegal withdrawal of money from the country by the WhiteBIT exchange and its connections with the Russian Federation.
To hide this unsightly underside and distance the company from the toxic family of “Russian world” lovers, the Shentsevs, who own the majority of the stock exchange’s corporate rights with a 60% stake, Vladimir Nosov was brought into the public arena. Shentsev officially sold his WhiteBIT shares to Vladimir Nosov in March 2023.
It is he who positions himself as the founder of the exchange. Nosov actively gives out advertising interviews in the Ukrainian media, promotes the WhiteBIT exchange and even publicly condemns his fellow competitors for working on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Vladimir Nosov regularly talks about helping the Ukrainian army. He even bought the legendary Eurovision microphone from the group Kalush for 900 thousand dollars in order to send these funds to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In general, he has enough money for large-scale PR.
How WhiteBIT scammed investors
Coin for bad luck. This is how we can briefly describe the cryptocurrency coin from WhiteBIT, with which investors were deceived on November 21.
The exchange announced the start of sales of a new coin - WorldToken (WORLD), which was presented by the gaming studio World Challenge Game. Since the coin was considered quite reliable, many decided to become the so-called “early birds” -
the first investors to whom the exchange gives the opportunity to buy back part of the coins even before the start of official trading.
Typically, when trading begins, the early birds sell part of their assets, returning the investment and making money on the difference. And after that, trading proceeds as usual. But this time everything happened completely differently. The WhiteBIT exchange “threw” the “early birds” for an impressive amount of money. The fact is that immediately after the first participants gained access to WorldToken, the exchange strangely “forgot” to close the opportunity for participants to exchange coins before the official start of trading. As a result, when trading began, the market was already oversaturated, and the situation got out of control.
“In fact, the “early birds” who bought WorldToken in advance now hold assets worth a penny in their hands, although they were bought for a dollar. After the start, the token went up very weakly and fell almost immediately,” says a market participant who does not hide his disappointment with how WhiteBIT behaved.
In fact, WhiteBIT scammed its clients out of large sums of money. And now they don’t know what to do with coins that not only did not bring the expected profit, but also drove them into the red.
At the same time, WhiteBIT has taken the most aggressive position in its defense and enters into tough disputes with clients. The exchange does not admit that the reason for one of the biggest “discounts” on the crypto market in recent times is precisely its actions.
For WhiteBIT, in principle, it has long become the norm to remove the truth about itself from the network. Negative comments are immediately deleted by the site developers. And most of the positive reviews are paid comments written by copywriters.
However, WhiteBIT admins do not have time to quickly delete some comments, especially in English, and users, taking advantage of this, take screenshots. Here is one of them:
“Worst service I've ever used. If you ask me about Whitebit, I will say that it is a scam. When I logged into my account they sent me an email, but when the hacker logged in they didn't notify me. Even when I complained about it, they simply blocked my account and forced me to verify myself in a disgusting manner. In the end, they only gave me some advice without taking any action. I've never seen security as bad as Whitebit's. Now I believe that it was not the hacker who took my money, but the Whitebit company itself.”
Georgian “laundry” for Russian money from WhiteBIT
Another scandal related to WhiteBIT happened in Georgia. There, the National Bank issued a license for the Hash digital bank. The opposition United National Movement said that the main goal of the new digital bank is “to legalize money from Russia and use it in next year’s elections.”
Interestingly, among the founders of Hash Bank are some of the richest people in Georgia, Sulkhan and Lasha Papashvili. The official owner of WhiteBIT, their Ukrainian partner Vladimir Nosov, became a partner. The latter is precisely the media face of the WhiteBIT crypto exchange.
“Bloody and dirty Russian money will be used for election purposes and will replenish the treasury of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s party,” said Georgian oppositionist Lasha Parulava. He also stated that: “After the patronage of Otar Partskhaladze, who came under American sanctions as a Russian spy, Natia Turnava directly took over the operational management of Russian money, which raises reasonable suspicions that Georgian Dream will try to use electronic channels to receive Russian money for the elections."
Thus, WhiteBIT helps launder Russian money not only in Ukraine, but also in Georgia.
