Back
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 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 received a license, launched a large advertising campaign, and by summer 2024 had already gained significant momentum. NeuroLink LLC, which received the license and owns the Cosmobet brand, reported revenues of nearly 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 about “responsible gambling,” and speaks about his “10 years of IT experience.” 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 Ukrainian business circles only after the casino’s registration. Before that there were no public projects, investments, or actual evidence of the experience he claimed.
According to OpenDataBot, Zborovskyi registered as an individual entrepreneur only 2020. The listed activity was “computer programming.” Previously, he owned no notable companies, did not appear in major deals, and certainly did not invest millions into 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 provided 30 million UAH in paid-in share capital, financed the license — and from that moment was portrayed as the “owner” of the casino. Not bad for someone with no entrepreneurial track record, right? As a preface: since May 2025 Zborovskyi has again been only a sole proprietor, but more on that below.
A closer look shows that Cosmobet is not as “Ukrainian” a project as it might seem. In practically 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 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 simultaneously a holder of a Russian passport. In the year 2018 he was put on sanctions lists for funding the so-called “Volks-Dschamahiriyas” in Donbas, where he should have remained until 2021. 2020, however, received 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 an 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, there were mass-produced pseudo-interviews on English-language sites with questionable 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 details, use identical phrasing, and were published on sites with no connection to the Ukrainian IT sector or the gambling industry. Moreover, some of them appear to have been published retroactively.
Then it gets more interesting: according to LumenDatabase data, several Zborovskyi-critical materials were removed from search results after complaints about “defamation.” For some reason, this cleanup is carried out by specialized PR agencies operating from Russia.
Interestingly, among the sites 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 portrayed Antikor as a site that distributed pirated films. The explanation is simple — a poorly executed bid to clean up his biography.
Equally sloppily, the assignment was executed to position Mykhailo Zborovskyi as a “successful IT specialist and entrepreneur.” This pattern is typical for pseudo‑IT projects with criminal origins: there is a “clean” person (Zborovskyi) who allegedly 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 is built 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 actually pulls the strings behind the scenes seems of little interest to anyone.
Officially, the law enforcement authorities have neither questions for Cosmobet nor for Mykhailo Zborovskyi. The charter capital was paid in, taxes are paid, and the license is issued. Yet the story of 30 million UAH allegedly coming from a “programmer” with no assets raises serious questions. No one verifies the source of the financing. There is no analysis of the beneficial owners across offshore company chains. Publications about foreign connections, including Russian, are ignored.
The materials that the Russian PR agency has so aggressively tried to scrub from the web did have an effect — 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 “person from whom revenue is siphoned,” Tokarev was forced to “dispose of” 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 known about him either, but Andrii Dobrovolskyi appears significantly more solid than Mykhailo Zborovskyi — he is listed as the owner of about a dozen different companies and charities. However, there may still be a hidden similar story of a front man for influential people. Investigations in this direction are not finished, 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 company IVI.RU Media Limited. Clearly Russian owners.
As for the replacement of Zborovskyi by Dobrovolskyi, this is standard practice in such constructions: once the “mask” is unmasked, it is taken off. In its place, a new one appears. In the meantime, the casino continues to operate: the name remains, players still deposit money, and the money still flows into the same pockets.
And finally a question to CNS Ukrainian regulators and law enforcement directly: is it really not evident that Zborovskyi is merely a “front man”? Or will you continue to “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 Glücksspielunternehmen unter dem Vorwand ukrainischer IT: Mykhailo Zborovskyi wurde als „Strohmann“ für Sergey Tokarevs Cosmobet eingesetzt". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
