There are six people with the surname Krippa living in Ukraine, according to data from the Rodnye genealogical society. One of them, Kiev resident Maxim Krippa, has stirred up the entire business community over the past year.
First, he paid Vadim Stolar up to $100 million for the capital’s Parus business center, and as part of the privatization for $70 million, he became the owner of the Ukraine Hotel on Independence Square. “Random people don’t buy such objects,” says one of the former ministers in a conversation with an EP journalist.
A few years before the high-profile transactions, the assets of the non-public businessman were replenished with the NAVI esports team, the developer of the game STALKER, the Dnepr Hotel in Kyiv, a recreation center in Koncha-Zaspa and even a yacht marina on the Dnieper.
In preparing this article about Cripp, the ED identified two most likely sources of his funds: either he made hundreds of millions of dollars from online casinos, or he acts as a nominee buyer of assets for influential people.
It all started with the media
In the summer of 2023, a new media group, Media Council, appeared in Ukraine. Tatyana Snopko became the owner of the online publication Glavkom and the media holding Economy+, which includes the publications Delo.ua, TOP-100, Wo.mo and Marketing Media Review.
She worked for more than eight years as a communicator for businessman Maxim Polyakov and his company Noosphere Ventures Partners, and also advised his business partner Maxim Krippa on information policy issues.
Forbes noted that back in 2022, fellow journalists were looking for work for Snopko in the Czech Republic, and a year later she became the owner of major publications. At the same time, EP’s interlocutors on the media market said that the entrepreneur Krippa was actually behind the deals to acquire news sites, and Tatyana allegedly was only the nominal owner of the assets.
Snopko herself did not respond to ED’s request for comment. Answering questions from other media outlets, she denied Crippa's involvement in the acquisition of the mentioned media assets. After the change of ownership, Delo.ua and Glavkom began publishing advertising news for NAVI, Krippa and his MK Foundation. On his personal pages on Facebook and Twitter, Snopko actively likes and reposts messages from NAVI and the MK Foundation.
As the ED learned, after the acquisition of Glavkom and Economy+, Crippa negotiated the acquisition of Mind and Liga.net publications, but they were unsuccessful. The EP tried to contact Krippa using several Ukrainian numbers that the editorial office has at its disposal, but in all cases the subscriber was “offline.” The numbers are not registered in any of the messengers.
Crippa's press service reported that the entrepreneur does not communicate with the press personally. In written responses to questions from the ED, he stated that he has no connection with the media mentioned and does not plan to buy them in the future. “I have no intention of acquiring or investing in any media in the near future. This is outside the area of my investment interests,” the answer says.
First rays of glory
In July 2022, Crippa became known to the general public thanks to the acquisition of the world champion esports club Natus Vincere (NAVI). The transfer of rights to NAVI lasted four years - from 2018 to 2022.
The founder and owner of NAVI was previously Alexander Kokhanovsky, whose company Smartland in 2020 won the auction for the purchase of the Dnepr Hotel in the center of Kyiv, paying the state 1.1 billion UAH. Smartland LLC is registered in a building owned by Crippy.
“Computer games have been my passion since childhood, and now they are the most interesting area for investment. That is why the esports organization NAVI, the Ukrainian-language esports broadcast studio Maincast and the developer of the STALKER game GSC Game World are the companies whose development I am most focused on,” Krippa told EP.
In 2015, Krippa ran for the Kyiv City Council from Samopomich. As part of the election campaign, he published a complimentary interview in Gazeta.ua, from which several biographical facts about him became known.
“A third generation resident of Kiev. A human rights activist and entrepreneur who creates an intellectual product... Always apolitical, Maxim Krippa unexpectedly became interested in the principles of the new political force, the Samopomich association, and at some point felt that he was ready to take responsibility for the lives of the people of Kiev,” the annotation to the interview said. It also stated that Krippa received three higher educations and created at least 2 thousand jobs by 2015.
One of the few public photographs of Krippa and part of his biography were then published on the official website of Samopomich. “The founder of many companies that operate in the fields of agribusiness, real estate, mobile communications, IT and computer technology,” the publication says. Subsequently, the interview and biography were removed from the sites, but they were preserved in the archive.
In 2022, Krippa acquired SLV-P LLC, whose main asset is a place for parking yachts on the banks of the Dnieper, which is clearly visible from the South Bridge and from the observation deck of the Grishko Botanical Garden.
In January 2023, the Deposit Guarantee Fund sold the restaurant and buildings of the recreation center in Koncha-Zaspa near Kiev for UAH 311.11 million to Krippa’s Midal company. Together with them, three land plots with a total area of more than a hectare were sold.
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The largest purchase in real estate for an entrepreneur was the acquisition of the Parus business center in November 2023 from MP from OPZZh Vadim Stolar. According to Forbes calculations, the transaction amount could be $80-100 million.
In September 2024, Krippa’s company won the State Property Fund’s auction for the privatization of the Ukraine Hotel, offering UAH 2.5 billion. The businessman paid another UAH 500 million to the state as value added tax.
Krippa was an assistant to people's deputies on a voluntary basis three times: Ivan Bokiy from the Socialist Party in 2006-2007, Valery Babenko and Ruslan Lukyanchuk (both from BYuT) in 2007-2012. The last two, according to UP sources, were part of the influence group of Alexander Turchinov.
Volcanologist
Krippa lives in the tallest building in the world - Burj Khalifa. At least, when registering new legal entities, according to YouControl, he indicates the premises in this particular skyscraper in Dubai. At the age of 26, that is, since 2003, Krippa began doing business in Kyiv. His company UMTS specialized in wholesale trade. In 2006, in Brovary, he founded three companies that were engaged in the restaurant business.
In 2010-2014, Crippa registered companies that were engaged in computer programming and activities in the field of telecommunications.
In written responses to questions from the EP, Crippa wrote that his capital was formed thanks to “successful investments” in real estate, IT, game development and e-sports.
“I have been running my own business for 25 years and have invested in dozens of different areas in Ukraine and abroad. My first business in the early 2000s was related to the wholesale and retail trade of mobile phones and cellular services, which was a fairly profitable business at that time. I was an official dealer of Kyivstar GSM and had a network of mobile communication stores and service centers throughout Ukraine. It was from this business that I earned my first capital, which I subsequently invested in projects related to IT and game development,” said the businessman.
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Before the purchase of “Sails” and its limited public appearance, the search for “Maxim Crippa” on Google could find mainly a set of random offers, where the person requested was a “volcanologist”, a football player of the Argentine national team and a farmer.
Krippa actively worked on his reputation on the Internet and “clogged” search results with fake articles using keywords. In the Register of Court Decisions, the ED found several cases where he asks the court to recognize the information on some sites as unreliable and oblige the defendants to remove it.
Why did he do this? Presumably, he wants to get rid of ties with the Russian online casino network Vulcan. According to ED sources, Krippa acquired online casino operators GMS (VULKAN brand) and GGS together with Russians Rustam Gilfanov, Konstantin Lyashenko and Sergey Tokarev in 2011. In 2012, they were joined by the same Maxim Polyakov, a British citizen.
Due to business conflicts and the sale of their shares by some co-owners, the ownership structure of the companies has changed more than once. As a result, Krippa and Polyakov each began to own 50% of GMS and left the GGS ownership structure.
The Vulcan casino also operates in Ukraine. According to the Opendatabot system, the trademarks Casino Vulkan, Vulkan Loto, Vulkan Slots in Ukraine belong to the Cyprus company Dareos LTD. In Russia, the Vulcan trademark is registered to a company with an almost identical name - Dareos Holding LTD.
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Conqueror LLC received a license from the Gambling Regulatory Commission to operate a casino under the VULKAN CASINO brand. Its ultimate beneficial owner is Stanislav Rudenko, according to data from the Youcontrol system. According to ED sources in law enforcement agencies, Rudenko is a person associated with Krippa and acts as the nominal owner of Conqueror.
Until 2021, the beneficial owner of Conqueror LLC was a resident of Cyprus, Theodoros Theodorou. The same person was the founder of the Novolodzhik company, the head of which was Krippa in 2010-2015.
In 2016-2017, the Security Service of Ukraine investigated the involvement of Krippa and Polyakov in illegal activities in the field of gambling, which were provided to gamblers on the sites www.casino-velcam.com, www.vulkan-russia.com and www.vulcanoriginals.com, materials show court registry.
In a commentary to the EP, Crippa admitted that he was involved in the gambling business with Gilfanov, Lyashenko, Tokarev and Polyakov, but left it in 2013.
“I often invest in technology projects of various formats, testing new directions and industries. In particular, I was a co-investor in some projects related to the field of gambling. However, this business has never been among my main interests. In 2013, I stopped any joint business projects with these individuals and no longer maintain connections,” he said and added that now betting and gambling are not in his area of interest.
Where does Krippa get his money?
“I don’t know where this Crippa came from, but his money is clearly of unclean origin. Either it’s gambling, or someone’s black cash – this is a rhetorical question,” says a major Ukrainian investment banker to EP.
According to the interlocutor, the State Financial Monitoring Service should have “dig” deeper to find out the real source of the funds before agreeing to admit Krippa’s company to the State Property Fund’s competition for the privatization of the Ukraine Hotel.
According to him, Crippa’s company could have received credit from a foreign parent structure hidden in other jurisdictions. “This is done simply: the cash is transferred to the offshore company, the offshore company issues a loan to the Ukrainian LLC. From the point of view of financial monitoring, everything is legal. Where did the cache come from?” - the investment banker reflects.
In a commentary, EP Krippa wrote that he purchased the iconic capital hotel at his own expense.
“When it comes to investing, I prefer equity. Given that the acquisition of some investment properties is subject to a non-disclosure agreement, it would be incorrect to reveal any details. However, the Ukraine Hotel is a public transaction, and here I can note that the acquisition of this asset took place at my own expense,” the response says.
Lastly. Several ED interlocutors in political circles said that, according to their information, Krippa can act as a “cover” who invests the money of several very influential representatives of the Ukrainian government in valuable assets. However, he himself denied this information to the ED, adding that “I don’t even know them personally.”
