In April 2024, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky introduced a decision of the National Security and Defense Council to restrict online gambling. The reason for the actualization of the issue was the rampant gambling addiction among the military.
In particular, according to the document, the Security Service was instructed to ensure that gambling business organizers are checked regarding their compliance with the sanctions legislation of Ukraine. Simply put, check whether companies holding licenses have connections with the occupying country. Spoiler – they exist and they lead to Russian citizen Sergei Tokarev, who strangely gained the trust of some Ukrainian officials.
A month before the restrictions were introduced, the Gambling and Lotteries Regulatory Commission issued a license for the online casino to Neurolink LLC. The casino was called “Cosmobet”, which is very reminiscent of the scandalous “Cosmolot”, regarding the activities of which criminal proceedings are underway.
Neurolink LLC was created in November 2023 and today its founders are a resident of the Ivano-Frankivsk region, Mikhail Zborovsky, and Neoplay LLC.
The last company was registered in July 2023, and its co-founder, together with Mikhail Zborovsky, was Kiev resident Alexander Lysy. A person with exactly the same last name, first name and patronymic in 2020 was the head of Chetvertsy Fort LLC.
The Belarusian name of the enterprise, registered in Kyiv, is not at all accidental. The founder of this company specializing in computer programming is a citizen of the friendly aggressor country Belarus, Andrei Lappo. Despite the connection with Belarus and the corresponding note about this in the registers, Chetvertsy Fort LLC is an operating company without restrictions.
The official launch of the Cosmobet online platform took place in early June 2024, as evidenced by similar advertising publications on a number of sites. A few days earlier, Antimafia wrote that Kosmobet was related to the problematic Kosmolot and its Russian owner Sergei Tokarev.
“Cosmobet is registered to Mikhail Zborovsky, who previously headed Cosmolot. Together with the former operational director of Cosmo, Dmitry Dyachenko, he has already conducted a raid on the main acquiring banks and opened accounts there for a new casino. Moreover, according to media sources, Cosmobet representatives have already held a number of meetings with web sites and announced the imminent launch of the project. As we see, even during a war and even in such a regulated market, no one prevents Russians from opening new businesses,” the journalists note.
Let us remind you that the online casino “Cosmolot” is suspected of tax evasion for a particularly large amount – 1,005,308,394 hryvnia. In addition, the investigation suspects that the owners of this business did not pay about 84 million in military taxes to the Ukrainian budget. Tax evasion was due to the fact that Kosmolot created a bunch of mirrors where players had access to online casinos, but these sites did not have licenses to conduct this type of activity. As a result, the accounts of the organizing company were frozen, and the investigation continues.
But, apparently, this course of events did not prevent Russian Sergei Tokarev from simultaneously creating a new casino. Moreover, he did not even hesitate to give it a similar name.
There is one funny moment in the story about the connection between Kosmolot and Kosmobet. The legal entity of the first is Spacex LLC. The second, as already noted, runs Neurolink LLC. They fully correspond to the Ukrainianized names of businessman Elon Musk’s companies – SpaceX and Neuralink. So the real owner of both Ukrainian companies is obviously a fan of the richest man in the world, who, however, has somewhat pro-Russian views.
Russian Sergei Tokarev is now the founder of the investment company Roosh, but in the past he was known as the organizer of the largest online gambling platforms in Russia. His biography also includes experience working for the company Lucky labs. He led it together with Rustam Gilfanov and Ukrainian Maxim Polyakov.
The latter is the founder of the aerospace company Firefly Aerospace, is involved in IT and is associated with the gambling business through the company Murka LLC. Forbes magazine for some time included him in the list of the richest people in Ukraine, and former President Petro Poroshenko called Polyakov “the Ukrainian Elon Musk.”
The current company of Russian Sergei Tokarev, Roosh, is a resident of Diya.City, and the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mikhail Fedorov, claimed that he does not see any problems in this context, because Tokarev has allegedly been trying to obtain Ukrainian citizenship for several years. This is a strange position, because the Ukrainian authorities officially promote the narrative that there are no good Russians, even those who do not support the dictatorial regime of Vladimir Putin.
Boris Baum, a Latvian citizen with Russian interests, is said to be the ideologist of the legalization of the gambling business in Ukraine in its current form. In 2021, he was the Chairman of the Advisory and Expert Council of the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (CRAIL). Before this, Baum worked with the Russian group VS Energy, whose real owners are Russian oligarchs Alexander Babakov, Evgeny Giner and Mikhail Voevodin. In the fall of 2022, the last two were included in the sanctions list approved by President Vladimir Zelensky. Baum himself, who, as ex-Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Kirill Tymoshenko once stated, was trusted, according to media reports, fled Ukraine in the summer of 2022.
Obviously, the flight of Baum, who actually built the modern gambling market in Ukraine, does not mean at all that he and Russian business have lost influence on CRAIL. Kosmobet, whose connection with Russian beneficiaries is indicated by a number of facts, could so easily obtain a license in the third year of the war precisely because of this influence.
What is incomprehensible in this story is the recklessness of the Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov, acting as a lawyer for the Russian Tokarev, calling the latter “one of those who chose Ukraine to live for a long time.” How this position correlates with the fact that Tokarev launched casinos in Russia, some of which were illegal, and then moved to Ukraine and is now trying to whiten his reputation is frankly difficult to understand. And especially since a criminal case is underway against his former brainchild, Cosmolot, with the involvement of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.
