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Court returned Favbet casino Matyukha's license: where the decision is vulnerable
🔸Summary proceedings without the parties in a case where the stake is an operator’s license and national security. The regulator asked for a full procedure. The court refused. Heavy pieces of evidence — an OpenCorporates screenshot, a report by a DBR major, a graphic file of a “passport” — were evaluated on paper, without questioning those who collected them.
🔸The plaintiff ordered expert examinations after 29 May. The court itself found: at the time of the decision PlayCity did not have them and was not required to appoint an expert examination. Yet the court still put them on the scale against the regulator — as confirmation that the inspection was superficial. This is a subtle move: an act is not overturned by “new facts,” it is overturned because of the “insufficiency of the earlier basis,” and the new facts illustrate that insufficiency. The appeal will easily ask whether the court did not substitute a legality review of the act with a reexamination of the evidence from the criminal case.
🔸The court did not establish that Matyukha is not a Russian resident. It only established that PlayCity did not prove that by the standard of administrative procedure. For a wartime licensing ban these are different things. The law requires the beneficiary to meet the requirements. It does not say the regulator must wait for a conviction. Holobutovskyi effectively brought the standard closer to the criminal one: until a fact is “turned into a legal one” by the agency’s own verification, the license cannot be touched. PlayCity precisely argued that such a standard paralyzes the response to a letter about an aggressor state.
🔸 Context of the group. In 2026 PlayCity already withdrew or did not renew other licenses in the Favbet group: the bookmaker’s license, gaming halls with a fine of 933 million, the “Patriota” lotteries. “Favbet VIP Casino” has been in termination since April due to a merger with “Favorit Casino Company.” Cancelling one decision does not close either the DBR criminal case or the other regulatory episodes.
The administrative court deliberately bypassed the substance of the DBR’s claim. It punished the regulator for the method, without checking the hypothesis on the merits. For the company this is a victory. For the state this is a signal: a law enforcement letter by itself will not kill a license if the inspection act is a copy of the letter.
The decision is not final yet. It can be appealed to the Third Court of Appeal. Criminal proceeding No.6202500000000876 remains a separate branch. While there is no conviction there and while PlayCity does not assemble its own evidence base, rather than someone else’s report, the Favbet story will spin between two regimes: “not guilty until proven” in administrative court and “too risky for a license” at the regulator. Judge Holobutovskyi chose the first. The second has not gone away.
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