Russian businessman Sergei Tokarev, unlike most of his compatriots, is a fairly respected person in Ukraine with an almost impeccable reputation. At least in certain circles, where they either don’t know or don’t want to notice his connections with Russia (which did not disappear during the war) and the sources of income through which he builds his current reputation as a visionary, venture investor and “ business angel."
Today Tokarev is known as the founder of Reface (and its predecessor Doublicat, which did not gain such popularity), the investment company Roosh, a participant and even an ambassador of many projects of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, an investor and an AI visionary, in a word, a person who is at the peak of the most popular and “media ” business trends. And also a patriot (specifically at this moment - of Ukraine), who thanks the Armed Forces of Ukraine and President Zelensky.
Sergei was so inspired by the speech of our president that after the start of the war he fled through the Carpathian mountains and thought about how to cross the border with a red passport... I hope he paid generously for the translation or writing of the post in Nightingale. Because who knows Tokarev - there is also that “PALYANITSA”. You will understand this later.
This was not always the case - just 5 years ago, in 2018, Ukraine added Tokarev to the sanctions list due to financing of terrorist organizations of the LPR and DPR by companies associated with him and visiting the occupied territories of Ukraine. One of the reasons was that from 2016 to the summer of 2022, Tokarev flew to Russia 172 times , as well as occupied Crimea, bypassing Ukrainian checkpoints at the administrative border. And in 2021, also during the war between Ukraine and Russia, Tokarev admired the success of Russian mobile games and development companies.
It can be noted that since February 24, 2022, many Ukrainians have changed their attitude towards Russia. But, firstly, Sergei Tokarev is not Ukrainian, but a Russian originally from Moscow, and we will return to this later. Secondly, he is connected with Russia not only by his place of birth, which means little, but also by education (which he does not really like to advertise), property and business. If with the first everything is quite banal - several apartments in Moscow and regions of the Russian Federation and cars, then it was Sergei Tokarev’s business that first created for him many problems with the SBU and sanctions, and then, the opportunity to build himself a “white” reputation as an investor and IT entrepreneur - in close cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation and its leadership.
The business for which Tokarev came under sanctions was called Lucky Labs and was, formally, an international IT company. As of September 2019, Tokarev was still giving interviews as the founder and representative of Lucky Labs. The aforementioned interview with Tokarev was published by RBC-Ukraine in September 2019, and already in July 2022 the same publication published an investigation about that part of the activities of Tokarev and Lucky Labs that was not advertised, because the company was developing software for the gambling business, which at the time of recording the interview , was outlawed both in Ukraine, where the company’s head office was, and, partially, in Russia.
You could come across the way online casinos function and attract customers even if you have never played anything other than football in the yard. And if everything is relatively obvious with the development of gambling software, then with promotion it is much more interesting. Part of this promotion included advertising video inserts on sites with popular films and TV series, which, focusing primarily on the Russian audience, inserted advertisements for Russian online casinos, for example, “Azino777” (and in particularly clinical cases, several times while watching). The scale of this activity made it possible to shoot commercial videos with the participation of popular rappers in the Russian Federation.
Tokarev’s current partner, Kirill Sigida, willingly spoke about his successes in the online advertising market in an interview (this conversation was recorded in 2017). There he acted as a co-founder and commercial director of Adwise Agensy, and announcements of events with the participation of the company and him as a representative can still be found on the AA pages, which have not been updated for a long time (the last entries date back to May 2022). Gambling here is modestly called the “gaming industry.”
On the company’s website, its clients list both representatives of the gambling market (Bwin, Favorit sport) and the current official business of Tokarev and Sigida – Reface. The Adwise Partners website tells more about the gambling direction of the company's work, which is focused directly on cooperation with website owners who are ready to accept advertising for gambling games, and the actual organizers of these games. Among the clients of this company was, for example, the Cosmolot network, the formal owner of which today is a person named Sergey Potapov (through the licensee SpaceX LLC, which until recently specialized in wholesale clothing trade and legal activities, but suddenly retrained as an organizer gambling and found 30 million hryvnia only for the authorized capital). Where in the clothing trade and legal practice there is software, network resources, equipment and specialists for 24/7 support of online casinos - one can only guess, given the entry in the register of non-payers of alimony, as can be found out from the data of the Opendatabot service.
In the already mentioned above investigation by the RBC-Ukraine publication, Sergey Tokarev is positioned precisely as a co-owner of the Cosmolot and PokerMatch networks, a division of the Parimatch network (which has recently also come under Ukrainian sanctions at the suggestion of the SBU). The connection between Tokarev and Parimatch ran through one of the former (?) partners of Roosh - Sergei Kartashov, a person much less public than Tokarev and Sigida.
Sergey Kartashov was one of the co-owners of Pokermatch.UA LLC , together with Ekaterina Belorusskaya, the owner of the licensee itself, Parimatch LLC . This entire structure came under sanctions from the National Security and Defense Council, and Sergei Kartashov, who was previously mentioned as a senior partner at Roosh, disappeared from the company’s website.
You can also find references to the cooperation of Tokarev (back when Lucky Labs existed) and the Kosmolot network, a year or two before the legalization of the gambling business in Ukraine. In the Unified State Register of Court Decisions you can find several documents relating to criminal proceedings against Loto-Plus LLC under Art. 203-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Illegal activities of organizing or conducting gambling, lotteries). These documents mention that gambling, the formal organizers of which were the legal entities mentioned above, were carried out under the Cosmolot brand, and the CL Loto software package was used for their implementation. The legal connection between Loto-Plus LLC and the Kosmolot (in this case, also known as Kosmolot LLC) is that they have common founders, in particular, the Seychelles company Lucky482 - in both it owns a 30% share. . Subsequently, Kosmolot LLC transferred the property rights to the Kosmolot trademark and a number of others to the current licensed organizer of gambling under this brand - the above-mentioned Spacex LLC, which, formally, has nothing to do with previous criminal stories.
What does Tokarev himself and Lucky Labs have to do with this? In the same 2020, an explanation of the “technical” side of cooperation , the legal side of which was discussed above, was published on the IT resource “IT.happens”. According to the publication of the resource, traffic from the Lucky Labs domains was directed to the lottery-cloud.com domain (the CL Loto software package mentioned above), which in turn was the technical domain of the Cosmolot network. The domains of the Parimatch network were located on the same server, and all of them were serviced by the above-mentioned Adwise Agency of Kirill Sigida, a partner of Sergei Tokarev and one of the leaders of Lucky Labs.
And finally, the third large online casino network, to which Sergey Tokarev is related, operates under the “First” brand, and the licensee is Fjorst Element LLC . Its formal owners are the closed investment funds “UA Development” and “Successful”, among whose shareholders only minority ones are known (one for each fund, as required by law). This is an effective scheme for hiding connections, and everything would be fine with Sergei Tokarev if he did not skimp on personnel. As in the situation described above with Sergei Kartashov, senior legal adviser of the “IT company” Roosh Anita Yarina , who was a representative in the registration of trademarks for the organization of online games under the “First” brand - information about which was preserved in the Ukrpatent register.
The history of Sergei Tokarev and his partners’ connections with the gambling business is much less known than their current public activities (although Kirill Sigida’s comments about the work of Lucky Labs from the position of the company’s commercial director can still be found). However, the latter is now officially a co-founder of the IT companies Reface, Zibra and Pawa and, together with partners, has the resources to create the expense side of the business. These are projects like the investment company Roosh (and resources for investment), SET University, STEM is FEM projects, and the like. Actually, the partners (at that time without Tokarev) acquired the same Reface already at the stage of the finished product and, based on available resources, made this product widely known.
Why this particular area? Because over the past few years, AI, machine learning and related industries have been a top trend in IT. There is a lot of talk about this direction, it is a priority for the largest players in this market, the largest funds are invested here, and the largest funds are spent here - quite transparently and legally, which is very important if the money itself is there, but with its legality and “status” there are some problems.
Therefore, Kirill Sigida does not like to remember Lucky Labs itself in his biography, but he remembered another company - Cupid PLC (and the previously popular dating application of the same name), with the owner of which, the same investor and visionary Max Polyakov , the history of the conflict of Sergei Tokarev is connected, his then partner, Russian Rustam Gilfanov, and Max Polyakov himself.
The essence of the conflict was that Tokarev and Gilfanov received from Polyakov a share in the company Phoenix Holdings ltd, which owned the Together Networks network of dating sites.
It soon became clear that the share that actually passed from Polyakov to Tokarev and Gilfanov was less than what was agreed upon by the parties. Questions also arose regarding the promised and not received amounts of dividends, which should have ranged from $250,000 at the time of the transaction to $500,000 9 months after acquiring a stake in the company. Judging by the fact that the original material about this story on the Rusbase website, where some materials from the court case were also published, was removed and replaced with banal advice on how to avoid becoming a victim of scammers, it remains very painful for some of the participants in the transaction. For whom exactly, it is difficult to say for sure, because Polyakov, Gilfanov and Tokarev were actively involved in whitening reputations and removing traces of participation in the dating business and gambling. Mentions of that scandal and trials, however, can still be found in the media .
It is worth making a remark that Max Polyakov, who is best known as an investor in the space industry and the former owner of Firefly Aerospace ( sell a stake in which he was forced due to the position of the US government , where they feared a leak of data critical to US national security, in particular in RF ) built his public reputation along the same lines as Sergei Tokarev and his partners - adjusted for the fact that during Polyakov’s time the “space” business was at the top, and Elon Musk and his SpaceX set the trends, with Boeing and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.
Since then, Sergey Tokarev and Rustam Gilfanov, at least publicly, no longer appeared as partners, however, messages mentioning “Rustamchik” were preserved on the former’s social networks.
The place of Russian Rustam Gilfanov on Sergei Tokarev’s Instagram was taken by his new partners - the already mentioned Kirill Sigida, investment banker Igor Mazepa, ex-Minister of Economic Development and Honorary President of the Kiev School of Economics Timofey Milovanov and the current Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Ministry of Digital Development Mikhail Fedorov, as well as his deputy Alexander Bornyakov.
with Igor Mazepa (investment company Sopsogԁ Capital ) not only by messages on social networks, but also by some business. In particular, Generation LLC, where the owner of half is Igor Mazepa’s Concord Consulting LLC. The remaining 50% belongs to Ilya Strakh, who also served as director of Betlab LLC (creates software solutions for accumulating data for betting on sports events). He was replaced as director by Irina Volnitskaya, who now heads the charitable foundation of Sergei Tokarev , in which Alexandra Borodina ( Creative communications director at Roosh ) and Bogdan Ponomar (director of Gezers LLC , whose owner is listed as Roosh CEO Denis Dmitrenko) have the right to sign.
The appearance of references to the Ministry of Digital Development and Mikhail Fedorov on the social networks of the Russian Tokarev coincided with the early lifting of Ukrainian sanctions on the latter, which were supposed to expire in 2021. However, already in May 2020, by presidential decree, sanctions against Sergei Tokarev were lifted. An interesting coincidence - as you can find out from Tokarev’s Instagram, Tokarev joined the commission of the competition organized by the Ministry of Digital Transformation a month before the sanctions were lifted and even allocated 1 million hryvnia for the competition’s prize fund. Obviously, Mikhail Fedorov did not see anything problematic in taking money from a Russian businessman.
In addition, the Law of Ukraine “On state regulation of activities related to the organization and conduct of gambling” was adopted only in July 2020, came into force in August, and it took some time for the first gambling operators to obtain licenses. At the same time, Sergei Tokarev’s partner Kirill Sigida spoke about the activities of Adwise Agency in 2017 (as mentioned above), and took part in conferences on the “gaming industry” in 2019. Sergei Tokarev himself financed the projects of the Ministry of Finance, although in 2020, but also before the adoption of the law that legalized casinos in Ukraine.
Today, several companies associated with Tokarev are residents of Diy. City, which was handled by the already mentioned Alexander Bornyakov - Reface Ukraine LLC (it was the Reface application that was the driver of Tokarev’s “white” IT legend, which replaced Lucky Labs ), Gezers LLC (here the founder is Denis Dmitrenko, director of the investment company Roosh , which is a kind of “umbrella” for all Tokarev’s IT initiatives), and Ruush LLC , which Tokarev himself owns through the Cypriot Roosh LTD. According to Opendatabot, the company was added to the list of residents of Diya.City on March 16, 2023, although as of March 23 of the same year, its owner, Sergei Tokarev, still had Russian citizenship.
Actually, journalists asked Minister Fedorov about this very unethical situation during a full-scale war with Russia. The text version of this conversation can now only be found in the web archive it has disappeared somewhere from the website of the LB.ua But a video recording has been preserved in which Mikhail Fedorov says that Sergei Tokarev is trying to obtain Ukrainian citizenship and the company, which has owners from the Russian Federation, “cannot” get into Diya.Siti. In practice, we see that it can still be done if these owners really want and are ready to finance the projects of the Ministry of Digital Development. Moreover, this is done through funds on cryptocurrency wallets. Money doesn't smell like that!
Now the logical question!? Where did the Russian Tokarev come from to finance the companies Reface, Zibra and Pawa, Roosh, and invest in SET University, STEM is FEM projects?
None of these companies report profits or pay out dividends to shareholders. On the contrary, Reface’s capitalization has dropped significantly, because no one needs simple technology at an expensive price. An overly expensive screen for a successful entrepreneur, on which only consultants and PR people made money. And also intermediaries and banks that laundered gray casino money through crypto and credited it to Sergei’s personal account as income from the financial investment market, or the successful sale of securities.
The answer to the question is simple, logical and well-reasoned! The main financial donor and wallet of Tokarev and his business partners are the casino projects Cosmolot and First. Both casinos were actively operating before the legalization of gambling. Both casinos dragged their feet on taxes until the last moment and only began to partially operate without a miscode at the beginning of 2023.
Today, these projects successfully operate through P2P and cryptoprocessing (60% of the volume), which allows one to avoid taxes and replenish the crypto wallet of the Russian Tokarev. Well, then that same “carousel” of crypto-intermediary-bank-income!
