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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
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The court returned Favbet casino Matyukha's license without waiting for a DBR verdict
9 in September, Dnipropetrovsk District Administrative Court judge Roman Holobutovskyi canceled PlayCity decision No. 209-R from 29 May. The regulator revoked the license of Favbet VIP Casino LLC (45026610) for land-based casinos. The basis — items 6 and 7 of part 1 of article 14 of the law on gambling: the organizer and its ultimate beneficiary cannot be residents of an aggressor state and cannot be controlled by such residents.
The beneficiary in the materials is Russian Andriy Matyukha. The case was considered in a simplified procedure, without summoning the parties.
What was on the table
8 in May the DBR sent PlayCity a letter within criminal proceeding No. 6202500000000876 dated 26 August 2025. The proceeding involves officials of the bookmaker company Favbet and Casino.ua; the articles — criminal organization, tax evasion, legalization, aiding the aggressor state, abuse of influence, abuse of official position.
PlayCity opened a desk audit, drew up an act, and revoked the license. The regulator said: the DBR materials contain a Russian TIN, a registration address in the Russian Federation, plots in Crimea, and a scanned Russian passport in the beneficiary’s name. The agency considered it unacceptable to wait years for a verdict during the war.
🚫 The company responded: Matyukha is only a citizen of Ukraine, there is no Russian TIN, no property in Crimea, the address in the Russian Federation “does not exist on maps,” and the “passport” is a fabrication. Later, after the regulator’s decision, the plaintiff brought three expert reports: a passport file without metadata and with signs of software processing; a portrait expert conclusion — “most likely different persons”; iCloud geotags — 24 May 2022, when the passport was allegedly issued in Moscow Oblast, the beneficiary was in Zagreb.
What the court wrote
Formally the court did not “acquit” Matyukha and explicitly said: it does not assess the criminal proceeding. It assessed something else — whether PlayCity itself established the legal fact of residency, or merely copied the investigation’s letter into the inspection act.
Holobutovskyi’s conclusion: the DBR letter is information about possible violations, not an established fact. The regulator used that same letter both as a reason to conduct the inspection and as proof of its result. The passport scan was not compared with the original, there was no request to the competent source to confirm issuance, and the contradictions that the company submitted before the court were not resolved. Therefore decision No. 209-R is unlawful.
This is classic administrative logic: the burden of proof is on the authority, an adverse act cannot be based on assumption.
To be continued
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