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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, however, a different reality: Zborovskyi effectively serves as a strawman 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 an extensive advertising campaign, and had already gained significant momentum by the summer 2024. NeuroLink LLC, which received the license and owns the Cosmobet brand, reported revenues of almost 218 million UAH in its first year.
On all official platforms, Mykhailo Zborovskyi is the face of the project. He gives interviews, comments on trends, writes columns about “responsible gambling,” and speaks about his “10 years of IT experience.” Everything appears professional, carefully staged, and … suspiciously smooth.
Who is Mykhailo Zborovskyi and what does Russia have to do with it
Mykhailo Zborovskyi rose to prominence in the Ukrainian business world only after the casino was registered. Before that there were no public projects, investments, or real evidence of 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 obtained 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 declared the “owner” of the casino. Not bad for someone with no entrepreneurial track record, right? Preview: Since May 2025, Zborovskyi has again been listed as a sole proprietor, but more on that below.
Upon closer inspection, Cosmobet does not appear to be 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, formerly associated with the Cosmolot brand. As pressure on Cosmolot intensified, Tokarev moved 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 placed on sanctions lists for financing the so-called “People's Dzhamahiriyas” in Donbas, where he should have remained until 2021. 2020, however, granted him amnesty from the new rulers.
Thus Mykhailo Zborovskyi appeared on the scene. But documents, statements, and the ownership structure point to the opposite: Cosmobet is not a new platform, but a continuation of the old scheme. Only with a new facade. Parallel to Cosmobet’s launch, there was an intensive media campaign to build Zborovskyi’s image. On Google, a flood of pseudo-interviews appeared on English-language websites with suspicious traffic (BaronBlakeslee, TheComfortCenter); articles about “Zborovskyii’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 details, use identical phrasing, and were published on websites with no relation to the Ukrainian IT industry or the gambling business. Moreover, some of them appear to have been backdated.
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 conducted by specialized PR agencies operating 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 “strawman” in Tokarev’s gambling business. For some reason, Russian PR people presented Antikor as a site that distributed pirated films. The explanation is simple — a sloppy job of cleaning up his biography.
Equally sloppy was the effort to position Mykhailo Zborovskyi as a “successful IT specialist and entrepreneur.” This pattern is typical of pseudo-IT projects with criminal foundations: there is a “clean” person (Zborovskyi) who supposedly runs the company; there are the actual owners (Tokarev and his circle) who control finances and management; and there is a license issued by the Ukrainian regulator — and everything else builds on that. Afterwards follow 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 agencies have neither questions for Cosmobet nor for Mykhailo Zborovskyi. The charter capital was paid, taxes are paid, and the license was issued. But the story of 30 million UAH said to originate from a “programmer” with no assets raises serious questions. No one checks the origin of the financing. There is no analysis of the beneficial owners across offshore-company chains. Publications about foreign connections, including Russian ones, are ignored.
The materials that the Russian PR agency has been 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 strawman and as a “person to extract revenue,” Tokarev was forced to “drop” Zborovskyi.
This is confirmed by the registration data of NeuroLink LLC and Neoplay LLC — Mykhailo Zborovskyi has been removed from the list of beneficial owners and replaced by Cypriot citizen Andrii Dobrovolskyi.
Little is known about him, but Andrii Dobrovolskyi appears substantially more solid than Mykhailo Zborovskyi — he is presented as the owner of around a dozen different companies and charities. However, this could also hide a similar story of a strawman for influential persons. Investigations in this direction are not complete, and it is too early to draw any conclusions.
However, 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 replacing Zborovskyi with Dobrovolskyi, this is common practice in such constructions: once the “mask” is unmasked, it is removed. In its place comes a new one. In the meantime, the casino continues to operate: the name remains, players keep depositing money, and the money keeps flowing into the same pockets.
And finally a question that one would like to pose directly to Ukrainian regulators and law enforcement: is it truly not evident that Zborovskyi is merely a “strawman”? Or will you continue “falling for this provocation”? In the case of Dobrovolskyi, the nominees seem more convincing, but they also raise enormous questions. Will there be answers to them?
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Russische glücksspiel-hydra unter neuem namen: Sergey Tokarev versteckte Cosmolot hinter der marke Cosmobet und Mykhailo Zborovskyi". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
