VBet, an online casino with Armenian roots, registered in Ukraine. More than a year ago, VBet used licensing information to gain media attention.
After February 24 and the full-scale aggression of Russia, the information campaign changed its focus to trends against the Russian presence in Ukrainian business.
Such retouched activity has an unconditional response for obvious reasons. According to VBet, the bookmaker is one of three truly Ukrainian and licensed companies in the gaming industry. Quite loud, considering that VBet is entirely owned by Armenian owners. And what’s truly Ukrainian about it is the players themselves.
Petition to the President - to close the business and clean up the place...
On October 30, 2022, a petition under number No. 22/171744-ep appeared on the website of the President of Ukraine. She calls for “imposing sanctions on companies associated with the aggressor state and supporting Russian business in Ukraine.”
But under such a loud and popular narrative, the call for sanctions concerns exclusively the betting industry.
In the text of the document, “closure” includes most of the companies from the list of CRAIL (Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries), which licensed all online casinos and bookmakers in Ukraine.
It is worth noting that online casinos and bookmakers were registered in Ukraine after the entry into force of the Law on Gambling Business, which appeared on the initiative of President Zelensky. This law opened up the opportunity for the legal development of the gaming industry with tax benefits for the state and the development of related industries.
Today, companies have all the necessary licenses and pay tens of millions in taxes, which is a great support in times of war. There is no doubt that all of them were checked by special authorities. Therefore, an attempt to look for a Russian one can be perceived either as a manifestation of ignorance, or unfair competition and a desire to displace key market players. But who benefits from monopolizing the market?
From many cases it is familiar that where there is a monopoly of transparency, there cannot be. This means that not only business will suffer. The budget, reputation on the world market, and the economy will suffer.
Nominal author – real VBet
The author of the petition is Victoria Melyushkova Eduardovna. Victoria is a professional photographer and works with the New Africa Studio agency.
If you look at the page of the author of the initiative, there are completely no signs of any interest in the gambling industry and the manifestation of certain competencies. By the way, Vika is generally focused only on her own photography business and is quite passive in the public sphere, as for the initiator of any movements and petitions. At the same time, the girl skillfully operates with supposedly reliable data in her address to the President.
The author's page has a list of companies where she worked. Victoria Melyushkova’s former place of work, the Business Tuning Center company, turned out to be interesting. Type of activity: advertising and marketing. This area is a professional competence for information campaigns of any complexity. Having made a few scrolls on the page, you can see a bright post with the company’s client – the VBet bookmaker. After this, the outlines of the overall picture appear.
Close professional relations with BTC made it possible to use Melyushkova as a formal attacker on VBet’s competitors, speculating on the state in which Ukraine now finds itself. The only thing that the initiators let out of sight was the “tail” that Victoria left on her social network at her place of work, which made it possible to identify the actual customer of the militant petition.
VBet is against everyone: an Armenian company is looking for a Russian trace in Ukraine in partnership with Russian business
In its business model, which does not involve competitors in the market, VBet itself has many dark spots. Who is who in this story?
VBet is listed in the register as a limited liability company "VBET Ukraine", led by Giorgi Givishvili. Giorgi is an example of a person with a lightning-fast career. In the intervals between “expert assessments” of blockchain technologies and the development of cryptocurrencies, Givishvili was listed as the director of several incomprehensible companies, in one of which, by the time of the full-scale invasion, the beneficiaries were Belarusians.
In total, since 2014, Givishvili has made the leap from the owner of Margroup LLC with a meager authorized capital of 200 hryvnia, to the head of the VBet bookmaker, which paid 100 million hryvnia for the license alone.
The beneficiary of VBet in the registers is a citizen of Armenia Badalyan Vigen Romikovich with registration in Yerevan. The founder is the company Soft Construct Limited, registered in the Isle of Man.
Further more interesting.
There are several versions of the site - vbet.ua and a mirror vbetua.com. Both sites belong to VBet, as reported by the company, which operated on the territory of Ukraine and in an illegal way.
In addition, VBet provides a detailed manual on how to bypass the ban by violating the law, using a mirror, VPN, etc.
If you go to the mirror site, the footer says VBetua.com is under the direction of the company Radon VB No. 126922 in the Commercial Register of Curacao).
Radon VB is the company that owns similar casinos in the world. And one of these is Vbet. It was founded and led by the same Armenian Vigen Badalyan, who appears as a beneficiary in the Ukrainian registry. The company, or more precisely a group of companies, has been operating since 2003.
Actually, Soft Construct Limited, and with it BetConstruct, are the companies that develop the entire gaming infrastructure for Badalyan’s empire and other casinos and bookmakers.
If you go to the BetConstruct website, you can find a mention of Soft Construct, which suggests that this is the same organization that is the founder and manages the Ukrainian bookmaker VBet.
And here is the most interesting thing. The site has a whole section dedicated to partners. It is in this chapter that among Badalyan’s partners, Bet and Soft Construct, and along with them VBet, the Russian bookmaker Fonbet is noted for a separate position.
Is there a Russian trace in the affairs of a company that is so militantly fighting to cleanse Ukraine of everything Russian?
Why do such manipulations work? Because marketing and PR skillfully manage emotions - because they take forms that are sensitive to Ukrainians. And the rest with VBet is what we have.
The Armenian gambling holding, adopting Ukrainian patriotic forms, absorbs the Ukrainian gambling business and undermines the situation on sensitive topics. And everyone already knows under whose political influence Armenia is.
VBet – cooperation with the occupier
But this is not the only “Russian trace” in the biography of the Armenian gambling holding. The BetCotstruct website talks about cooperation with one of the oldest Russian offices, BetCity.
And on specialized sites for players you can find a list of BetConstruct clients, some of whom accept bets from Russians.
In addition, through the company Fastex, owned by SoftConstruct (owner Badalyan), the Armenian gaming giant sponsors and organizes the Russian Poker Tour. This is how they entertained the Russian audience while simultaneously calling for sanctions for cooperation with the occupier.
To make it more convenient, SoftConstruct organized the Russian Poker Tour right in Armenia, which Badalyan probably doesn’t really want to clear of Russians.
How Vbet deceived Ukrainian football - friendship with Pavelko
VBet entered the Ukrainian market very aggressively, finding common interests with the scandalous head of the Ukrainian Football Association Andrey Pavelko.
Initially, the Armenian company became the main sponsor of the Ukrainian championship, displacing its competitors. Later they began to sponsor the national team. VBet itself had to pay $1 million to Ukrainian clubs last season. The clubs received only 720 thousand. The rest of the funds ended up in the UAF as gratitude for such a sponsor as VBet. And it is still unknown how many corrupt contributions Pavelka personally provided to VBet in order to enter the country’s football industry.
In addition, the Armenians brought their friendly company BetRadar to Ukraine, which received monopoly ownership of the betting rights of the company’s clubs. The transaction cost is a little more than 100 thousand dollars. Pennies compared to the final benefit. Ukrainian football clubs have not received anything from this agreement and will not receive anything.
It turns out that in the few years of its Ukrainian registration, the Armenian bookmaker managed to evolve from a participant in corruption schemes around football to a fighter against the Russian trace in Ukrainian business. Only such a business biography is definitely worthy of the attention of investigative authorities, who will have enough Russian leads on the VBet cell to tie the hands of the most scandalous online bookmaker in Ukraine.
