War, casinos, Russian money: what does online casino Slots City and Slot King have to do with the occupying country?

Gambling addiction is a huge problem for fighters defending Ukraine from an aggressor country. To escape constant stress and exhaustion, military personnel are willing to spend tens of thousands of hryvnia, not realizing that the situation is getting out of control. Some players become so addicted to online gambling that they end up in insane amounts of debt.

And a fighter with debts amounting to several zeros is an easy target for Russian recruiters. In this material, read about the online casinos Slots City and Sloto King, their probable connections with the Russian Federation and the dominance of advertising, including those aimed at military personnel.

On April 15, 2024, a well-known Ukrainian activist, sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Pavel Petrichenko, died in battles against the Russian occupiers. A large number of famous people and the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky expressed condolences to the loss. In addition to defending the Motherland, in the last days of his life Pavel actively raised the problem of total gambling addiction among soldiers on the front line. The petition of a deceased serviceman to ban playing in online casinos for military personnel gained the required number of votes in a matter of days, and Vladimir Zelensky instructed to consider the issues specified in it.

Earlier, this topic was also raised by activist and serviceman Yuri Gudymenko. “A person with debt is the most susceptible recruiting tool. And if you think that only we use this tool, then you are f*cking wrong. The Russians know this as well as we do and take advantage of it hyperactively. And our fighter with debts is just a gift for them. There will be no examples, but, unfortunately, not because there are none. They exist,” he noted.

The problem of gambling addiction does not bother civilians either. Especially those who found themselves on the brink of survival during the war and are trying to grab any opportunity to make money. Online casinos advertised by famous bloggers, telegram channels and even some media seem like straws for such vulnerable people to grab onto.

Among those whose advertising appears almost more intrusively before the eyes of people with mobile phones are Slots City and Slotto King. Although these companies are in no way connected with each other, they bring equally great trouble for gambling addicts.

Slots City and connections with Russia

The legal entity that received a license for the Slots City online casino in February 2021 is Gamedev LLC. As of March 2024, the founders of the company were the Joint Stock Company “Belfort Closed Non-Diversified Venture Corporate Investment Fund” and Israeli citizen Yakov Finkelstein.

The company was created in December 2019 by Maxim Kovtonyuk, and a year later Ruslan Nonka joined him. These surnames are important, because a number of other companies are registered in them, the names of which suggest a connection with the gambling business. In particular, among them: “Gambletech”, “Statbet”, “CenterGame”, “Gameyug”. With a high degree of probability, such a number of companies for the same people may indicate that they act as legal entities for other online casinos, essentially copies of Slots City, but do not have a license from the Gambling Regulatory Commission.

Ruslan Nonka remained among the founders of Gamedev LLC until November 2023. Now the company is officially headed by Israeli Yakov Finkelstein. The search for a person with such a surname might not have yielded the slightest result if not for his sister, Bella Semyonovna Finkelshtein, with whom he and another business partner own a vodka factory in Nemirov, Vinnytsia region, the world-famous Nemiroff brand.

Until recently, Yakov Finkelstein bore the surname Gribov and was a long-time member of the hundred richest people in Ukraine according to Forbes. In pre-war 2021, Yakov Gribov occupied 83rd place in the ranking with a capital estimated at $140 million.

Around 2010, Nemiroff was one of the most popular brands in Ukraine. Thus, vodka of this brand appeared in the video of singer Ledy Gaga “Bad Romance”, the company was one of the main sponsors of title boxing fights, and almost all champion arm wrestling matches were branded with Nemiroff symbols.

The company had factories in several countries, including Russia and Belarus. It was the Russian Federation that became the reason why the company began to crumble. Initially, the founders of Nemiroff were Yakov Gribov, Anatoly Kipish and Alexander Glus. In 2010, Gribov and Kipish almost agreed with the Russian businessman, owner of Russian Standard Rustam Tariko, on the sale of the company, but Alexander Glus was against this agreement. The Russians were ready to pay $350 million for Nemiroff.

In 2013, Yakov Gribov openly called the Nemiroff brand “not Ukrainian”: “We managed to localize the distribution site of these unauthorized products. Now this is one state - Ukraine. They cannot sell their products in other countries, because in other countries there are laws according to which Nemiroff is sold only through the legal owner of the trademark rights, Nemiroff Vodka Rus and NIPE. Our next step is to explain to suppliers and consumers, that is, distributors and retail chains, that selling Vinnitsa products is dangerous.”

In an interview with the Russian Forbes in the same year, he quite clearly spoke out for the fact that he sees Ukraine and Russia as fraternal peoples: “I was and remain a supporter of close trade, economic and cultural ties between Russia and Ukraine. For Nemiroff, the benefits of the Customs Union are obvious. In my opinion, what is being clarified today on the Maidan is not the Russia-Ukraine-EU relationship, but the claims against the current government that have accumulated among a fairly large part of the population, and the energy of this discontent is precisely directed against friendly and mutually beneficial relations between Russia and Ukraine.”

All the years of the conflict between Yakov Gribov and Alexander Glus, Nemiroff vodka was bottled at Russian factories, first in Bashkiria, and then in the Penza region. Actually, in the last location it continues to flow to this day, despite the 10-year war that Russia unleashed against Ukraine.

And only in 2023, the Ukrainian manufacturer Nemiroff demanded that the Russian company United Penza Vodka Factories (OPVZ) stop using the brand. As of today, the trials are still ongoing, with the last hearing taking place in March 2024. From the case review card, according to the Russian registry, it is being considered behind closed doors, so it is impossible to find out the details yet.

Last month, Russian media reported that the Russian company was considering the possibility of producing alcoholic drinks under the Demiroff brand, so as not to be associated with the Ukrainian one and thus resolve the conflict. At the same time, experts do not rule out that there may be agreements on this matter between Gribov, who is now called Finkelstein, and the Russians. “Renaming to Demiroff may be a consequence of an agreement between the parties... In this case, a settlement agreement must be concluded, approved by the court,” says Russian lawyer Sergei Zuikov.

Nevertheless, while the trials continue, and Russia has been waging a full-scale war against Ukraine for three years, Nemiroff vodka can easily be bought in stores in the occupying country. Here are examples.

Why was the face of Yakov Finkelstein described in such detail? So that the reader understands that his intentions to be friends with Russia did not leave his mind even in the third year of a full-scale invasion. Therefore, the fact that he now owns the Ukrainian online casino Slots City, although it is not his core business, this business plays perfectly into the hands of the Russians, who only see how to ruin Ukraine.

Slot King and loyalty to Russians

The story with the Ukrainian online casino Sloto King is a little different. It has no direct connection with the occupying country. But you can find information online that Russians can still play on this platform and even withdraw money in rubles.

The legal entity that received a license to conduct gambling business for Sloto King is Slots U.Y. LLC. Its only founder since September 2020 is Pavel Zhurilo. He also runs another company, Option Time LLC, where his partner is Liliya Vakulchik. The woman owns the most elite real estate in Kyiv, including an apartment and two garages in Novopecherskie Lipki, two garages in the newfangled French Quarter residential complex and two rooms in another section of the same complex. Real estate in these complexes is one of the most expensive not only in Kyiv, but in Ukraine as a whole, and this is where the so-called Ukrainian elite live.

From specialized gaming sites we also managed to find out that Sloto King “is managed by Netgame Entertainment NV and is aimed primarily at players from Ukraine and Russia.” The latter company is registered on the islands of Curacao, controlled by the Netherlands. From the registries you can find out that NetGame Entertainment NV was founded in 2012. This is an important point, because in 2012, gambling was still prohibited in Ukraine.

In the latest reviews of Sloto King you can find out quite interesting information. One of them says that the casino has been operating since 2011, the other - since 2014. It is difficult to say for sure why the years of creation differ. But this is not important, since in both the first and second cases this work was illegal in Ukraine.

The Russian resource Casino.ru offers us even more information, where it is reported that the online casino Sloto King is designed for Russian-speaking users and positions itself as the first Ukrainian casino in the hryvnia. Rubles and dollars are also available for account management.”

Therefore, even if the Ukrainian founders of the online casino Sloto King do not have a direct connection to Russia, they definitely must explain how they could work in the field of online games during a period prohibited by law and why they allow the use of their platform for withdrawal of funds in Russian rubles .

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When Vladimir Zelensky declared the idea of ​​legalizing the gambling business in Ukraine, including online casinos, a very good idea was pursued - filling the budget. According to the calculations of the Slidstvo.info project, this business actually showed good income in 2023 - UAH 53 billion. But these amounts differ several times from how much Ukrainians spend on online and physical gambling. On an annual basis, this is UAH 144-180 billion, which is more than twice the volumes declared by official players in this area. If we remember that part of these funds are taken out of the pockets of Ukrainian military personnel, then this is a complete disaster.