In 2023, online casinos in Ukraine earned about 55 billion hryvnia. This is twenty-eight times more than last year. The numbers are impressive, and it would seem that after the legalization of the gambling business, part of these funds should replenish the Ukrainian budget.
But it didn't work out as expected. The Cosmolot casino alone is suspected of understating personal income taxes by more than a billion hryvnia. The “fake” management of the gaming platform talks about slander and pressure, but the real owners of “Cosmolot” from the Russian Federation, in all likelihood, applaud themselves when they see the amount of money they are using to “warm up” Ukraine.
“Cosmolot” is one of the first online casinos that received a license to conduct online gambling business after the legalization of gambling in Ukraine. The platform has been registered with Spacex LLC, the final beneficiaries of which are currently a resident of the village of Lysogorka, Zaporozhye region, Sergey Potapov, and a German citizen with UK residence, Arnulf Damerau.
However, the chain of connections makes it clear that the real owner of Cosmolot is Russian citizen Sergei Tokarev, who launched the most famous online casinos in the Russian Federation. His connection with Kosmolot can be traced through the Lucky partners platform, thanks to which players were attracted to Russian sites.
It was precisely because of numerous materials in the media proving Kosmolot’s connection with the citizens of the aggressor country that the management of the online casino began mass pressure on journalists to remove these articles. This also led to hacker attacks against Ukrainian online resources.
Russian Tokarev was under Ukrainian sanctions from 2016 to 2020 on suspicion of financing the quasi-entities “DPR” and “LPR”, but this did not stop him from ingratiating himself with the current Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mikhail Fedorov and even becoming a resident of “Diya.City” with project Roosh.
From the beginning of 2024, real problems began in the Cosmolot online casino when the Bureau of Economic Security took over. In February, accounts in the amount of 700 million hryvnia were arrested due to the fact that, despite their legal status, the online casino had several dozen mirror sites that did not receive licenses but allowed them to play. Thus, Kosmolot could evade taxes for a considerable amount of time for a long time.
The court decision of July 16, 2024 sheds light on other violations of tax laws by the Russian owners of Kosmolot. From the case materials, it became known that in 2023 the casino had an agreement with the Cypriot company Xgen solutions LTD for the use of licensed software - interactive gambling. Simply put, according to the documents, Kosmolot allegedly used a platform created by a company from Cyprus. True, the investigation found that the Ukrainian casino “owed” the Cypriots more than 301 million hryvnia, which, however, was indicated in tax reporting as paid royalties. In fact, for the Ukrainian tax authorities, Kosmolot indicated that it paid a Cypriot company for the software, but in fact no payments were made.
Xgen solutions LTD is a typical Cypriot gasket, which until January 2023 was led by Latvian citizen Aleksejs Lutovinovs, born in 1984. He is also listed as the head of several other companies in the UK.
It is likely that the Latvian director of Xgen solutions LTD may be associated with the nominal owner of Spacex LLC, Arnulf Damerau. In fact, this may mean that the Cyprus company is fictitious and was created only to process non-existent payments through it.
But that's not all. As noted in the materials of the criminal case, the Kosmolot online casino made payments totaling 5,713,749,950 hryvnia from January 1, 2021 to June 2023, of which only 1.2 billion were winnings to players. The balance is UAH 4.5 billion. was transferred in the form of a refund of deposits allegedly not used for the game. At the same time, the audit did not confirm that this money was not used for bets. This conclusion is confirmed, among other things, by witness testimony. The investigation suspects that Kosmolot indicated these 4.5 billion as deposits in order to minimize the tax burden.
Since payments on winnings are subject to personal income tax and military duty, and the return of pseudo-deposits is not, Kosmolot did not pay additional taxes to the state in the amount of 1,005,308,394 hryvnia. Also, the budget of Ukraine lost almost 84 million in military taxes from casino operators. And this fact, perhaps, should please the Russian owners of Kosmolot more, because it is obvious that their interests do not include assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
In this case, the Office of the Prosecutor General asked to seize funds from Kosmolot, given that, despite the February court decision, the online casino continued to use bank accounts. Additionally, prosecutors asked financial institutions to record the amounts of Spacex LLC that remained on the date of the decision in order to track changes if Cosmolot continues to circumvent court decisions.
The court sided with the law enforcement officers and satisfied the request to seize Kosmolot funds, which were recognized as evidence in the criminal case.
The bottom line is that even though Kosmolot claims that law enforcement agencies are putting pressure on people without reason, the investigation has proven that in fact the company is “heating up” the Ukrainian budget by billions. Particularly cynical is the understatement of payments for military taxes, which finance the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, the Russian roots of Kosmolot directly hint that such actions could have been committed deliberately.
