The owner of the online casino and e-sports bookmaker GGBet, to which the Gambling and Lotteries Regulatory Commission issued licenses to operate in Ukraine, despite their Russian origin, is buying Ukrainian media and state real estate one by one.

Starting in January 2023, Tatyana Snopko, a resident of the city of Dnepr, bought the online publication delo.ua, mmr.ua, womo.ua, the printed magazine “TOP-100” (LLC “Communication Hub “Economy”), as well as the publication “Glavkom” ( LLC “Ukrainian Media Systems”). According to preliminary estimates, such purchases of Snopko, little known on the media market, could cost from $3.2 to $4.3 million. This is despite the fact that, according to the tax returns of the new owner of five media, for 2018-2021 inclusive, her income was only about 4 million UAH.

Tatyana Snopko (center) with the editorial staff of the publication “Glavkom” / Photo: Facebook Mick Pidvezianiy

According to journalists, Snopko, who owns only a 42-meter apartment in the Dnieper “Khrushchev”, is the PR manager of Ukrainian businessmen Maxim Polyakov and Maxim Krippa, who are the actual new owners of the above media.

Maxim Krippa and Maxim Polyakov are long-time business partners involved in the gambling and e-sports business. Since about 2014, they have been developing online casinos, created in the “zero” years by Russian gambling magnate Oleg Boyko, who, through his company Ritzio Entertaiment Group, transferred the rights to Krippa-Polyakov’s company EvoPlay, an IT company developing games for online casinos .

But the owner of the trademark in Ukraine is the Cypriot company DAREOS LTD. In 2021, the same company registered the right to TM Vulkan with the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union. In Russia, the trademark is registered to the company “DAREOS HOLDING LTD”, identical to the company “Dareos LTD”. They are both registered at the same address in Cyprus and have the same persons in their management structure.

Thus, the owners of the trademark in Ukraine and the Russian Federation are completely associated with non-resident companies, which indicates the only beneficiary of the business in all countries where online casino sites operate.

In 2016, the SBU drew attention to the illegal activities of a number of websites under the . why they distributed the profits among themselves. In addition, as follows from a number of decisions of the Shevchenkovsky District Court of Kiev dated January 2017, part of the money was transferred to finance the “DPR” and “LPR”.

The owner of the trademark, Polyakov and Krippa’s partner, Russian billionaire Oleg Boyko, who in those years also owned the Ukrainian “Patriot” lottery and the Russian “Victory” lottery, was also accused of financing the Russian army.

The investigation also confirms a direct connection between Maxim Krippa, the GGBet bookmaker and the casino. Thus, the beneficiary of Conqueror LLC until 2021 was Fedor Fedorov, in whose company Novolodzhik Maxim Krippa worked as a director until 2015. Fedorov today is the director of the Cyprus companies One World Secretarial and Brivio Limited. The first carries out secretarial management of the MainCast broadcast studio of Maxim Krippa, as well as the Cypriot owner of the Russian division of GGBet Bet.ru LLC. The second one is the owner of the sites gg.bet and vulkanvegas.com.

One World Secretarial also acts as the secretary and Cypriot founder of the esports company NAVI, purchased by Maxim Krippa in 2022 from businessman Alexander Kokhanovsky. Together with him, for UAH 1.1 billion, they purchased the Dnepr Hotel on Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv. In addition, in 2023, Maxim Krippa, through his Midal LLC, bought the hotel and restaurant complex “Princely Dvor” from the National Bank for 33 million UAH, as well as for 311 million an estate in the villages of Koncha-Zaspa and Kozin near Kiev, consisting of several residential buildings, a boathouse, a restaurant and several plots of land.

Despite the Russian origins of the online casino and bookmaker GGBet, the Gambling and Lotteries Regulatory Commission renewed its license to operate in Ukraine in January 2023, and in August 2023 issued a license to GGBet.

It is noteworthy that in March 2023, the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky, by his decree, imposed sanctions on the Russian bookmaker GGBet.