Russian gambling under the cover of war: how Sergey Tokarev-linked Cosmobet obtained a license in Ukraine

In April 2024, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy enacted a decision of the National Security and Defence Council to restrict online gambling. The reason for the issue was widespread gambling addiction among the military.

In particular, according to the document, the Security Service was instructed to ensure that gambling business organizers are checked for compliance with Ukrainian sanctions legislation. Simply put, to check whether licensed companies have any ties to the occupying country. Spoiler: they do, and they lead to Russian citizen Sergey Tokarev, who has somehow gained the trust of some Ukrainian officials.

A month before the introduction of restrictions, the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries issued a license for the online casino OOO Neyrolink. The casino was called “Cosmobet”, which is very similar to the scandalous “Cosmolot”, regarding whose activities a criminal case is being conducted.

Russian gambling under the cover of war: how Sergey Tokarev-linked Cosmobet obtained a license in Ukraine

Neurolink LLC was established in November 2023 and today its founders are Ivano-Frankivsk region resident Mykhailo Zborovskyi and Neoplay LLC.

Russian gambling under the cover of war: how Sergey Tokarev-linked Cosmobet obtained a license in Ukraine

The latter company was registered in July 2023 and was co-founded by Oleksandr Lysyi, a Kyiv resident, together with Mykhailo Zborovskyi. A person with the exact same last name, first name and patronymic was the head of Fourth Fort LLC in 2020.

The Belarusian name of the company registered in Kyiv is not accidental. The founder of this computer programming company is a citizen of Belarus, a country friendly to the aggressor country, Andrey Lappo. Despite the connection with Belarus and the corresponding note in the registers, Fourth Fort LLC is a functioning company without any restrictions.

Russian gambling under the cover of war: how Sergey Tokarev-linked Cosmobet obtained a license in Ukraine

The official launch of the Cosmobet online platform took place in early June 2024, as evidenced by similar advertising publications on a number of websites. A few days earlier, Antimafia wrote that Cosmobet was related to the troubled Cosmolot and its Russian owner Sergey Tokarev.

Russian gambling under the cover of war: how Sergey Tokarev-linked Cosmobet obtained a license in Ukraine

“Cosmobet is registered to Mykhailo Zborovskyi, who used to run Cosmolot. Together with the former Cosmolot COO Dmytro Dyachenko, he has already raided the main acquiring banks and opened accounts for the new casino. Moreover, according to media sources, Cosmobet representatives have already held a series of meetings with webmasters and announced the imminent launch of the project. As you can see, even during the war and even in such a regulated market, no one prevents Russians from opening new businesses,” journalists note.

As a reminder, Cosmolot online casino is suspected of tax evasion in a particularly large amount of UAH 1,005,308,394. In addition, the investigation suspects that the owners of this business did not pay almost UAH 84 million in military tax to the Ukrainian budget. The tax evasion was due to the fact that Cosmolot had created a bunch of mirrors where players could access online casinos, but these sites did not have licences to conduct this type of activity. As a result, the accounts of the organising company were arrested, and the investigation is ongoing.

But, apparently, this course of events did not prevent Russian Sergey Tokarev from simultaneously creating a new casino. Moreover, he did not even hesitate to give it a similar name.

There is one funny thing about the story of the connection between Cosmolot and Cosmobet. The legal entity of the former is SpaceX LLC. The latter, as already mentioned, is run by Neurolink LLC. They fully correspond to the Ukrainianised names of the companies of businessman Elon Musk – SpaceX and Neuralink. Thus, the real owner of both Ukrainian companies is obviously a fan of the world’s richest man, who, however, has somewhat pro-Russian views.

Russian Sergey Tokarev is currently the founder of the investment company Roosh, but in the past he was known as the organiser of the largest online gambling platforms in Russia. His biography also includes experience of working at Lucky labs. He ran it together with Rustam Gilfanov and Ukrainian Maksym Polyakov.

The latter is the founder of the aerospace company Firefly Aerospace, is engaged in IT and is connected with the gambling business through Murka LLC. Forbes magazine included him in the list of Ukraine’s richest people for some time, and former President Petro Poroshenko called Polyakov “the Ukrainian Elon Musk”.

The current company of Russian Sergey Tokarev, Roosh, is a resident of Diia.City, and the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, claimed that he did not see any problems in this context, as Tokarev had allegedly been trying to obtain Ukrainian citizenship for several years. This is a strange position, as the Ukrainian government officially promotes the narrative that there are no good Russians, even those who do not support Vladimir Putin’s dictatorial regime.

Borys Baum, a Latvian citizen with Russian interests, is called the ideologist of the legalisation of gambling in Ukraine as it is now. In 2021, he was the chairman of the advisory and expert council of the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (CRGL). Prior to that, Baum worked with the Russian group VS Energy, whose real owners are believed to be Russian oligarchs Alexander Babakov, Yevgeny Giner and Mikhail Voevodin. In the autumn of 2022, the latter two were included in the sanctions list approved by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Baum himself, who, as former Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo Tymoshenko once stated, had confidence in, according to media reports, fled Ukraine in the summer of 2022.

Obviously, the flight of Baum, who actually built the modern gambling market in Ukraine, does not mean that he and Russian businesses have lost their influence on KRAIL. “Cosmobet, which has been linked to Russian beneficiaries by a number of facts, could so easily obtain a licence in the third year of the war precisely because of this influence.

In this story, the recklessness of Digital Transformation Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who acts as a lawyer for the Russian Tokarev, is unclear, calling the latter “one of those who chose Ukraine to live in long ago”. How this position correlates with the fact that Tokarev ran casinos in Russia, some of which were illegal, and then moved to Ukraine and is now trying to whitewash his reputation here is frankly difficult to understand. Moreover, there is a criminal case against his former brainchild, Cosmolot, involving Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.