Can Russian business operate, and most importantly, make money in Ukraine during the war? The question is obvious, because only traitors or saboteurs are capable of giving money to the enemy during a war.
At first glance, the Ukrainian authorities are doing everything possible to clear the economic space of the influence and presence of Russians. In particular, these are sanctions against companies and citizens of Russia and the nationalization of banks and enterprises of Russians in favor of the state.
This is what happened, for example, with the giant companies Zaporizhstal, Morshynska, Kyivstar and dozens of other companies.
But, unfortunately, there is an exception to the rule.
For example, back in the spring of this year, by decision of the National Security and Defense Council, sanctions were introduced against gambling operators that were in one way or another connected with Russia. These are dozens of companies, hundreds of individuals and loud statements about the irreconcilability of this phenomenon.
At the same time, not everyone was included in the list. Why?
The reason for selectivity is unknown, but we can look at this issue with an example. We will talk about one of the leaders in the gambling business in Ukraine - the online casino Pin-UP, created by Russians.
As Evgeny Plinsky reports in his Youtube channel, the formal owner of this casino is the founder of the financial company that controls the movement of money from the Diya application.
Most of the questions in this story arise to the regulator of the Ukrainian gambling business - the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries
(CRAIL). Having in hand the unconditional facts of control of Pin-UP by the Russians, this body at the last moment refused to deprive them of their license and has been hiding from public comments for two months now.
Taking into account the information received about the existence of indirect relations of control by residents of the Russian Federation over the activities of certain licensees, KRAIL considered the issues of canceling the licenses of UKR GAME TECHNOLOGY LLC and VICTORIA-SOFT LLC.
The first company holds the license, and the second is a structural part of Pin-UP, responsible for software development and maintaining the gaming site.
During the Commission meeting, its newly appointed member Yevgeny Yakhniy suddenly became ill and the meeting was postponed for a week. In fact, everything looked as if Yakhniy, who was appointed to the commission by Prime Minister Shmygal just a few weeks ago, deliberately disrupted the extremely important meeting.
By the way, Yakhniy was the founder and director of the payment operator X Pay. Even market participants associate his appearance on the commission with shadow groups influencing the power structures on the gaming market.
As a result, VICTORIA-SOFT LLC was deprived of its license on the basis of unconditional evidence, but they decided not to touch the second company, UKR GAME TECHNOLOGY, which runs Pin-UP. The latter even filed a lawsuit against KRAIL, which they wanted to prohibit from considering issues of license deprivation.
Chairman of KRAIL Ivan Rudoy ignores appeals and requests from the media and people's deputies and simply hides from this topic.
Let's look at the history of the creation of Pin-up. One of the founders and real owners of online casinos is Russian Alexander Matyashov with the pseudonym “Riddick”.
Matyashov appears as one of the beneficiaries of the Cyprus company Guruflow Team Limited, which is the offshore foundation of Pin-up, and the owner of the trademark.
Matyashov’s business partners at the time of obtaining a license in Ukraine were: Ivan Bannikov, Dmitry Punin (both Russians) and Ukrainian Maria Ilyina, Punin’s wife.
At the end of 2019, Dmitry Punin registered the company “Guruflow Team Limited” in Cyprus and issued 1000 shares of this company, divided into 500 shares between two other offshore companies: Pirpos Holding LTD and Monak Limited. The owners of the first are Punin himself and his wife Ilyina, and the second company belongs to Matyashov (Riddick) and Bannikov.
Thus, everyone received 250 shares of “Guruflow Team Limited”, which owns the Pin-up legal entity. We also know about the Maltese company “Pin-up Entertainment LTD”, the beneficiary of which is the aforementioned “Guruflow”.
There is a photo online where this company is celebrating the fifth anniversary of Pin-Up in Kyiv in August 2021.
However, the Russians were not noticed in KRAIL and a license was issued in the spring of 2021.
2 weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Riddick-Matyashov gave an interview to a well-known thematic YouTube channel about IT business. In it, Riddick frankly says that Pin-up is a casino created by Russian investors for the 2018 FIFA World Cup and is very proud of the pace of their expansion in our market.
It is noteworthy that after the start of the “noise” around Pin-up in August of this year, this interview was deleted from all sites on the Internet. When asked by reporters, Riddick still objected.
The second offshore “PIN-UP” is called “Carletta Limited”, and its owner is also Russian Zudilin Ilya Nikolaevich. On many international PIN-UP websites this offshore company is listed as an online casino operator. However, for some reason, the owners of Pina-pu are actively removing this information from their resources.
Only on the basis of all these facts, Pin-up should have immediately been deprived of its license, because during registration it was stated that the casino was a purely Ukrainian product and there were no representatives of the aggressor country present in it.
But this is an outright lie. They were not just present, they actually continue to receive income in Ukraine, which then ends up in Cyprus offshores.
Now it’s worth mentioning the representatives of the resource in Ukraine. The main legal entities are already familiar to us: Ukr Game Technology LLC, Victoria - Soft LLC, and Pin-AP LLC.
The latter was registered in September 2020, six months before the launch of Pin-up in Ukraine, and its owner was the wife of Russian Dmitry Punin, Ukrainian Marina Ilyina.
He officially heads the global holding PIN-UP Global and publicly represents the brand. This year, even together with Riddick, Ilyina became the winner of the SiGMA & AGS Awards Eurasia 2023 competition.
“Ukr Game Technology” was registered in March 2021, and its owner through another company “Ukr Game Consulting Group” was a kind of know-name Yaroslav Fomitsky.
Before registering Pin-Up, this name appears in documents as the director of the Finexpers Financial Company, owned by the famous fintech investor and banker Igor Fisun, who is the same partner of the Russians in Ukraine.
This character owns several more interesting assets, in particular, part of the little-known bank Oxy-Bank, the processing company Ukrkart, and the Interkassa payment system.
Market players say that it was around Interkassa that the interests of global Pin-up investor Dmitry Punin and Ukrainian fintech investor Igor Fisun converged.
Interkassa served payments to the Pari-Match online casino and made very good money from it, but in the end their top client abandoned the services in favor of their own 4bill and Paymega system. This prompted Fisun to look for new partners.
It is unknown on what terms they cooperate, but in March 2021, the company “Ukrgametechnology” was registered under the director of the company FC Finexpress Yaroslav Fomitsky, which quickly received a license from KRAIL and began to work.
The collaboration turned out to be very successful, because the growth of market share was at the level of 10-15% monthly.
An interesting fact is that in a letter from the SBU to KRAIL back in 2021, it was said about the connection between Ukr Game Technology and the Russians. But even then the Commission ignored this information, so they were calmly allowed to enter Ukraine.
The situation began to change with the outbreak of a full-scale war.
First of all, the Russian office of Pin-up responded. In April 2022, Pin-AP.RU LLC changes owners and name. The company becomes OO Fonkor and becomes the property of the Clear Center Joint Stock Company of Alexander Udodov, a relative of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
It is precisely because of his family connection with Mishustin and his influence on economic processes in Russia that Udodov is under sanctions from Ukraine and the United States. Another owner of the Russian Pin-up turned out to be a certain Alexey Dymov. There is little information about him, but he is also on Ukraine’s sanctions lists.
There have been no significant changes in the Ukrainian online casino cell since the beginning of the war. The company works quietly, earns money and becomes a full-fledged leader. The same cannot be said about their offshore verticals. In mid-2022, the Cyprus company Guruflo Team Limited will be completely re-registered under Marina Ilyina, and Punin and Matyashov will be crossed out.
At the beginning of 2023, structural changes begin in the Ukrainian division of Pin-Up. In January, Marina Ilyina is removed from the list of beneficiaries, and Bogdan Shiyan becomes its owner, changing the name to Tranitadevelopment.
Shiyan is another know-name with more than 50 companies registered to his name, and he himself has lawsuits for non-payment of utilities and household loans. Obviously, Ilyina was simply trying to hide her participation in the project.
In April 2023, the formal owner of Pin-up, Yaroslav Fomitsky, sells Ukrgeimtechnology to a new owner. He becomes Igor Zotko, who from now on becomes the public face of Pin-up in Ukraine and gives a bunch of interviews to the media.
It is known that Igor Zotko is also associated with fintech investor Igor Fisun, and, most likely, the change of owner of Pin-up in Ukraine occurred only formally, as well as the withdrawal of Russians from Cypriot offshores.
From 2016 to 2020, in an interview with NV, he headed the same Fisun payment system Interkassa. But in July 2020, Zotko left the post of director of Interkassa, becoming the owner of the United Space Financial Company. An interesting fact is that the company services all payments for the Diya application.
Is “Single Space” an independent project of Zotko? Unknown. But, most likely, he continues to lobby the interests of Igor Fisun, because half of all the company’s funds are kept in Oxy Bank, of which Fisun is a co-owner. Such coincidences, you see, do not exist.
At the beginning of 2023, the flow of all finances of the state project “Action” is in the hands of one person, while the Pin-Up online casino is suspected by the SBU as a structure controlled by the Russians.
Moreover, Zotko openly states in an interview with NV that he has been involved in Pin-up since 2020, when the Russians brought him to Ukraine. And now he complains that at the beginning of this year pressure began on the company, which they began to “paint in tricolor and write other nonsense.”
Mr. Zotko lied, because there is a photo online of the celebration of the fifth anniversary of Pin-up in Ukraine in 2021, which we mentioned earlier. On the festive stage, together with Marina Ilyina, whom he remembers as the owner of Pin-up, are other Russian shareholders of the parent offshore Guruflow, in particular, her husband Dmitry Punin and Alexander Riddick.
In addition, it seems very likely that the investor of the online casino project is banker Igor Fisun. If the purchase of the Zotko casino is just a formality, then the actual partnership between the Russians and Fisun is unchanged, as is the withdrawal of money from Ukraine to offshores.
There are a lot of questions for the national gaming regulator. Issuing licenses to legal entities registered to fake people without analyzing the origin is very unprofessional or very corrupt. Given the blindness to the above facts, the second option is more likely.
In fact, someone's invisible hand divided Russian business in Ukraine into two parts. We mercilessly punish one, nationalize and close it, because it is beneficial for someone, and we take care of, guard and protect the other.
Question to the SBU regarding the monopolization of payments in the “Action” application, to which, in all likelihood, Russians and the FSB may have access.
So far there are more questions than answers.
