The gambling business of Ukraine has long been in some way connected to Russian money, schemes, and crime. And our today’s hero, a citizen of the Russian Federation with a Ukrainian passport, Nikita Izmailov from Parimatch, knows this from his own experience, since he N1 Management Company and SportBank old projects FSBash crime from the aggressor country. The head of the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine, Igor Cherkassky, has already raised the issue of how N1 Management Company and Nikita Izmailov’s SportBank have been attempting to clean tens of millions of dollars in Ukraine for several years. However, things did not go beyond words. Apparently, Nikita Izmailov has supporters in the OP.
For many years, Nikita Izmailov has been involved in cleaning dirty money, so the principles of combating money laundering AML and FATF are familiar to him thoroughly.
Zerkalo Nedeli published an article “Wild Gambling” today about how fraud in the gambling business was legalized, where the FATF criteria are indicated. The author does not directly name the companies and individuals, but they are already well known.
Nikita Izmailov liked to clean for Russians and BC Parimatch
Managing partner of BC Parimatch Nikita Izmailov, who worked for several years in this large company, realized that a lot of money was cleaned on their own payment systems, so he decided to engage in such a profitable “business”. Moreover, this “business” became legal only this year, and before that, dubious payment systems were used for many years to accept illegal payments through the bookmaker’s website, since betting activities have been banned in Ukraine since 2009.
For this purpose, the Cypriot company N1 Management Company was registered, which allegedly helps FinTech companies enter the market and increase profits. The site of this company does not contain a manual, there is no phone number and profiles in social networks. However, in the media and on his Facebook page, Izmailov is listed as the creator of the first investment fund for fintech startups N1.
Ermakov, Grechin, Elagina, Bakumenko, Gordienko – how the criminal scheme works in Ukreximbank (investigation)
Laundries N1 Management Company and SportBank Nikita Izmailov
The most famous public asset of this company is Sportbank (Sportbank LLC), which, according to Izmailov, was originally created for Parimatch clients. The rest of the “business” is a simple “roof” for small companies associated with accepting payments from betting and issuing online loans, that is, simply “cleaning” funds.
By the way, the indicators of Sportbank LLC for 2020 are zero: income of 15 thousand UAH, loss of 200 UAH.
Among the partners of Nikita Izmailov’s N1 Management Company is a system for accepting HIGHRISK payments (illegal bookmakers, etc.) paymega.io and the same system asquad.io.
Nikita Izmailov
All these and other pseudo-payment systems used by Nikita Izmailov, shareholders and top management of Parimatch to cash out funds from betting activities, were fictitiously created and have no popularity, including on social networks and on the sites themselves there is no information about the management and contact persons, and only the reverse form of communication.
Among the lending companies are Kachai Groshi and Money4YOU, through which money from betting activities is also laundered.
Nikita Izmailov is also the owner of several companies, including Money4YOU (Manifoyu LLC), Westpoint Invest LLC and others.
Also, Nikita Imailov has a food company EAT EASY, previously it was a joint business with his wife, but now he is the main shareholder through the Cypriot gasket Aloelena Trading Limited.
The bottom line is not an investment fund for fintech start-ups N1, but a set of financial pads for accepting payments and lending companies, as well as a loss-making healthy food company by Nikita Izmailov himself, as well as several of his partners, including Denis Saprykin. The question remains: where are Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, financial regulators, as well as AML and FATF looking.
