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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
One of the fastest-growing online casinos in Ukraine — Cosmobet — is formally owned by Mykhailo Zborovskyi, who in the media is portrayed as a “successful IT entrepreneur,” a visionary and reformer of the gambling market. Behind the public image of a supposedly independent businessman lies another reality: Zborovskyi effectively serves as a front man for the actual people and interests behind the casino.
At the end of 2023 a new player appeared on the Ukrainian gambling market — Cosmobet. The online casino quickly obtained a license, launched a large advertising campaign, and by the summer 2024 had already gained significant momentum. NeuroLink LLC, which received the license and owns the Cosmobet brand, reported revenues of almost 218 million UAH in its first year of operation.
On all official platforms, Mykhailo Zborovskyi is the face of the project. He gives interviews, comments on trends, writes columns on “responsible gaming,” and talks about his “10 years of experience in IT.” Everything seems professional, carefully staged, and… suspiciously smooth.
Who is Mykhailo Zborovskyi and what does Russia have to do with it
Mykhailo Zborovskyi became known in the Ukrainian business world only after the casino was registered. Before that there were no public projects, investments, or actual evidence for the experience he claimed.
According to OpenDataBot, Zborovskyi registered as a sole proprietor only 2020. His listed activity was “computer programming.” Previously, he did not own significant companies, did not appear in major deals, and certainly did not invest millions in the gambling business.
Yet 2023 he became the beneficial owner of Neoplay LLC and later NeuroLink LLC, which received a state gambling license. According to the documents, he contributed 30 million UAH in share capital, paid for the license — and from that moment was the “owner” of the casino. Not bad for someone with no entrepreneurial track record, right? Ahead of time: since May 2025 Zborovskyi has again been only a sole proprietor, but more on that below.
Upon closer look, Cosmobet is not as “Ukrainian” a project as it seems. In virtually all independent investigations (Antikor, Slidstvo.Info, Antimafia.se) the name Sergey Tokarev appears — a Russian businessman and owner of gambling networks, previously associated with the Cosmolot brand. When pressure on Cosmolot increased, Tokarev moved the assets, re-registered the platform, and presented it as a new structure with a new face.
Background: Sergey Oleksandrovych Tokarev. Owner of the Cosmolot casino, friend of the Minister of Digital Transformation, Fedorov, and at the same time holder of a Russian passport. In the year 2018 he was put on sanctions lists for financing the so-called “People's Jihadadhis” in Donbas, where he should have remained until 2021. 2020, however, received amnesty from the new rulers.
Thus appeared Mykhailo Zborovskyi on the scene. But documents, statements, and the ownership structure point to the opposite: Cosmobet is not a new platform but a continuation of an old scheme. Only with a new facade. Parallel to Cosmobet’s start, there was an intensive media campaign to build the image of Zborovskyi. On Google, mass pseudo-interviews appeared on English-language sites with dubious traffic (BaronBlakeslee, TheComfortCenter); articles about “Zborovskyi’s influence on the tech market”; as well as fake analytical pieces about his “role in the digital transformation of gambling.” All these materials contain no concrete information, use identical phrasing, and were published on sites that have nothing to do with the Ukrainian IT industry or the gambling business. Moreover, some of them were apparently published with retroactive dates.
Then it gets more interesting: according to data from LumenDatabase, several materials critical of Zborovskyi were removed from search results after complaints about “defamation.” For some reason, this cleanup is performed by specialized PR agencies that operate from Russia.
Interestingly, among the websites against which IVI.RU LLC filed complaints is antikor.info, which repeatedly reported on Zborovskyi and his role as a “front man” in Tokarev’s gambling business. For some reason, Russian PR people presented Antikor as a website that distributes pirated films. The explanation is simple — a sloppy job to clean up his biography.
Equally sloppy was the effort to position Mykhailo Zborovskyi as a “successful IT specialist and entrepreneur.” This pattern is typical for pseudo-IT projects with criminal foundations: there is a “clean” person (Zborovskyi) who allegedly runs the company; there are the actual owners (Tokarev and his entourage) who control finances and management; and there is a license issued by the Ukrainian regulator — and everything rests on that. After that come publications, media staging, commissioned articles, and reputation cleanup.
Should Zborovskyi be “disposed of?”
In the end, everyone is satisfied — except the journalists and the public. The casino operates, taxes are paid, the face is “Ukrainian” — and who is pulling the strings behind the scenes seems to interest no one.
Officially, law enforcement has neither questions for Cosmobet nor for Mykhailo Zborovskyi. The authorized capital was paid in, taxes are paid, and the license was granted. Yet the story of 30 million UAH, supposedly coming from a “programmer” with no assets, raises serious questions. No one checks the origin of the financing. No analysis of the beneficial owners across offshore company chains is performed. Publications about foreign connections, including Russian ones, are ignored.
The materials that the Russian PR agency was trying so hard to scrub from the net did have an impact — after a series of publications by Antikor, Antimafia.se, and Repost.News in which Zborovskyi was directly described as a front man and as a “source of revenue,” Tokarev was forced to “discard” Zborovskyi.
This is confirmed by the registration data of NeuroLink LLC and Neoplay LLC — Mykhailo Zborovskyi was removed from the list of beneficial owners and replaced by Cypriot citizen Andrii Dobrovolskyi.
Little is publicly known about him, but Andrii Dobrovolskyi appears significantly more solid than Mykhailo Zborovskyi — he is listed as the owner of around a dozen different companies and charitable organizations. However, behind this may lie a similar story of a “front man” for influential figures. The investigations in this direction are not complete, and it is too early to draw conclusions.
It is hardly a coincidence that the owner of IVI.RU LLC, which sent complaints about publications on Zborovskyi, is the Cyprus-based IVI.RU Media Limited. With clearly Russian owners.
As for the replacement of Zborovskyi by Dobrovolskyi, this is a common practice in such constructs: once the “mask” is unmasked, it is taken off. In its place comes a new one. The casino continues to operate in the meantime: the name remains, players keep depositing money, and the money continues to flow into the same pockets.
And finally a question to pose directly to Ukrainian regulators and law enforcement: Is it truly not visible that Zborovskyi is merely a “front man”? Or will you continue “fall for this provocation”? In the case of Dobrovolskyi the nominee figure seems more convincing, but it also raises enormous questions. Will there be answers?
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Russisches Casino unter dem deckmantel ukrainischer IT: Mykhailo Zborovskyi wurde zum „strohmann“ für Sergey Tokarevs Cosmobet". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: HAB Media.
