The other day, law enforcement officers conducted a search in the house where ex-forward of the Dynamo Kyiv football club Artem Milevsky and a man calling himself a bookmaker, Sergei Tretyak, live. The visit of the security forces took place as part of an investigation into a criminal case related to betting fraud.
On the morning of September 24, special forces armed with machine guns burst into the house where Artem Milevsky lives with his friend Sergei Tretyak. The hosts came out one by one to meet the guests with their hands raised. After the special forces were convinced that there was no one in the house and the owners did not pose a threat, they relaxed. The policeman said that they came with a search as part of a criminal investigation by order of the investigator of the Pechersky district judge of Kyiv with two witnesses and a cameraman. The video of the beginning of the search was published by Sergei Tretyak on his channel. The search concerned match-fixing and other issues. The prosecutor's office confirmed this information to Apostrophe.
Bribery of football players
The National Police hinted that the case is old. Back in April of this year, a scandal broke out. As it turned out, there was an attempt to bribe the players of the Transcarpathian football club Minai so that they would surrender the match to Dynamo Kyiv in the 25th round of the last championship. These players were Dmitry Nemchaninov and Evgeny Skiba, and this happened on the eve of the match with Dynamo.
As the players themselves said, a man from Milevsky called them on the phone, introduced himself as Sergei and offered to record a broadcast on Twitch. But already during the conversation, everyone was offered 5 thousand dollars for the defeat of Dynamo - a club that is now having a hard time and needs support. Nemchaninov and Skiba refused, although they were convinced by verbal tricks that negotiations had already been held with other players and everyone had agreed. The players told the club management about the situation, the club conducted an investigation and decided to appeal to football justice - to the UAF, to the Fair Play Committee.
This Sergei turned out to be Tretyak, who calls himself a bookmaker. Of course, he kept objecting. He claimed that there was no such conversation, he did not offer money, but in general was going to bet on Dynamo to win.
“I am a shareholder in a bookmaker in Spain. We got abnormal bets of -1.5 for Dynamo. In order not to lose money, I decided to find out what was happening in “Minaya”. Therefore, I went to Skib and Nemchaninov to ask them: will they fight? And here’s another good reason – an invitation to Twitch,” he told reporters.
But Sergei Tretyak in 2020 was considered one of the organizers of a fixed hockey match in Belarus. The investigation claims to have confirmed Tretyak's involvement, but no case was brought against him in Belarus. Now Tretyak briefly commented on the matter of bribing players: “FC Minaj”?.. I don’t even know such a team. The search is related to e-sports.”
The Cyber Police Department told Apostrophe that the searches were related to fraudulent activities.
“The search was carried out on persons influencing the results of sports competitions. This also applies to e-football. Investigative actions relate to the fraudulent actions of these persons, classified under Article 190 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. However, more detailed information will be available later, the investigation continues,” department press secretary Julia Girdvilis told Apostrophe.
And, perhaps, we are talking about the last interesting bet that Milevsky and his friend Tretyak boasted about. The match in the lower divisions of the Brazilian championship brought them almost 700 thousand hryvnia. Sergei Tretyak, together with Artem Milevsky, bet on the Spartax - Esporte match, which took place as part of the Brazilian Paraibano League 2. Tretyak learned from his own sources that the guests from Esporte would win the first half. Five minutes before the end of the first 45 minutes, when the score was 0:0 and the odds on 0:1 reached 3.35, they bet 7 thousand dollars. And literally a minute later, Esporte scored a goal.
But, according to cybersecurity specialist Valentin Glebovsky, it is very difficult to prove cases of fraud with bets in court. Usually such cases drag on for years and finally fall apart. So the prospect that someone will be imprisoned for these frauds is minimal.
The National Police reminded that this is not the first search of these persons. At the beginning of the year, this house was already searched by special forces as part of an investigation into an organized crime group involved in drug sales and pimping. On January 17, the Department of Internal Security of the National Police of Ukraine announced that it had eliminated an organized criminal group that supplied drugs and prostitutes to VIP clients during curfew in Kyiv and the region. Milevsky was not personally involved in this case, but his friend came to the attention of the police because of his connections. Today they are on trial together.
