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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Who really stands behind the online casinos Cosmobet and Championclub? The Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries has already ceased its operations. However, the licenses it issued remain valid and continue to bring their holders millions of hryvnias. At the same time, there is still no clear answer to the question of who actually benefits from these profits.
The outlet Comments investigated who profits from the online casinos Cosmobet and Championclub at the expense of Ukrainians. It turned out that this is not so easy to determine, although officially there should be no unanswered questions.
Cosmobet: Russian company or subsidiary of Ukrainian GameDev
In March 2024 NeuroLink LLC received a license to operate the online casino Cosmobet. The declared business activity was the organization of gambling, and the authorized capital is 30 million UAH. Although the website is currently unavailable, the company generated almost 2024 218 million UAH.
The ownership structure is somewhat opaque. Officially NeuroLink is owned by another legal entity, NeoPlay LLC. Its business activity is computer programming, and its authorized capital is 300.000 UAH. NeoPlay, in turn, is owned by a specific person: Mykhailo Zborovskyi.
Very little is known about the owner of a company with revenues of 218 million UAH. There are, however, plenty of media interviews with Mykhailo Zborovskyi in which he claims to have worked for more than ten years in IT and gambling markets in Asia, Latin America, Malta, and Curaçao. These interviews do not answer the questions, though.
In particular, it remains unclear where Mykhailo Zborovskyi got at least 57,69 million UAH for NeuroLink’s authorized capital and the annual license fee. By law, the authorized capital of an online casino must be at least 30 million UAH, while the annual license costs 27,69 million UAH.
The origin of the 30 million UAH might be explained relatively simply: the money could have been "extracted" from the parent company NeoPlay LLC. According to OpenDataBot, NeoPlay had assets worth 30,3 million UAH as of 2023. However, in 2024 the financial report showed only assets of 2,5 million UAH and a loss of 30,6 million UAH.
This suggests that certain company assets may have been sold or otherwise contributed to the authorized capital of NeuroLink LLC, which was founded in November 2023.
The source of the almost 27,7 million UAH for the online casino’s annual license, however, remains unclear. Of course, one could assume that Mykhailo Zborovskyi earned that money during his ten years operating in the markets of Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
However, a person with the same full name registered as an individual entrepreneur in the field of computer programming as of 2020. Since NeoPlay LLC also operates in that field, it is quite possible that the entrepreneur has been working in Ukraine since 2020. If he then already had the necessary capital for the gambling business and ten years of industry experience, the question arises why he did not enter that market already in 2021.
Some clues come from the corporate history of NeoPlay LLC, which was founded in July 2023. According to registry data, the company initially belonged to one Oleksandr Lysyi. Zborovskyi took it over on 8 November 2023. NeuroLink LLC was then founded on 23 November.
A person with identical personal data, Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Lysyi, previously headed Fourth Fort LLC. The name of that company is not coincidental, because its owner is Belarusian citizen Andrii Lappo.
On this basis, some media previously linked the online casino Cosmobet to Russian businessman Sergey Tokarev, who was allegedly also behind the online casino Cosmolot. However, that suspicion was not confirmed.
At the same time, the media discovered an interesting connection that could lead to another major player in the online casino market: GameDev LLC. The company’s declared business activity is the organization of gambling, and its authorized capital is 30 million UAH.
According to intellectual property registers, the Cosmobet trademark, now owned by NeuroLink LLC, was registered in 2021. The application was filed by businessman Ruslan Nonka. Because NeuroLink itself was only founded in November 2023, the brand apparently previously belonged to the businessman, who was among the first co-owners of GameDev LLC.
The media reported extensively about GameDev and its former owners, including Ruslan Nonka and Yakiv Finkelshtein. The latter is the founder and co-owner of a vodka brand and previously bore the name Yakiv Hrybov before changing it.
Although the company was officially sold to a family of agricultural entrepreneurs from the Odesa region, Yakiv Finkelshtein could still be controlling the company as well as the online casinos SLOTS CITY and Beton.
Championclub: a new facade for the ChampionCasino of a former Lutsk councilman
Another new player, the online casino Championclub, appeared after the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries issued a license to Malyna LLC in April 2024. The company’s declared business activity is the organization of gambling, and the authorized capital is 30 million UAH.
The company’s owner is Ruslan Drozdov from the Volyn region. A bit more is known about him, but this case raises questions as well. Some of those answers are already partially known.
The central question remains the same: where did a man registered as an individual entrepreneur in computer programming as of 2014 get almost 58 million UAH for the company’s license and authorized capital?
Drozdov was and is the co-founder of several companies. Given Malyna LLC’s revenues of only three million UAH in 2024, his business does not appear particularly successful.
Nevertheless, Ruslan Drozdov is not new to the gambling market. He owns 14 percent of Lymon LLC, which organizes gambling and has an authorized capital of 30 million UAH. Lymon operates the online casino ChampionCasino, which achieved revenue of 2024 2,5 billion UAH.
That Championclub and ChampionCasino have the same co-founder and obviously similar names clearly indicates a connection between the two brands. That connection does exist. However, it may not be the individual entrepreneur Ruslan Drozdov behind both casinos, but rather the "gambling king" of Lutsk, Andrii Pokrovskyi.
Local media in his hometown of Lutsk had already given the former city councilman that nickname long before gambling was legalized in Ukraine.
Specifically, the news agency Volynski Novyny claimed that Andrii Pokrovskyi entered the gambling business in the 2000s through a network of entertainment establishments under his control. After the gambling ban of 2009 he said he had ceased those activities, but allegedly continued them.
According to media reports, Andrii Pokrovskyi allegedly ran the illegal gambling business in Lutsk through a network of companies and trusted persons. Among them the name Ruslan Drozdov also appears.
Drozdov was co-owner and director of several firms that belonged to, or formerly belonged to, people who, according to Volynski Novyny, 2019 were involved in the illegal gambling business in Lutsk.
Andrii Pokrovskyi began his political career 2015 with the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. He is considered one of the wealthiest residents of Lutsk and was even mentioned as a possible mayoral candidate. Apparently, however, he withdrew from politics: 2021 he left the Lutsk city council and focused on his business activities.
In his asset declaration filed when leaving the city council for 2021, he listed 38 real estate properties, ten vehicles, and the rights to a computer program called “Champion.” The name strikingly resembles that of the online casino, which also operates on the basis of computer programs.
Thus, it can be concluded that while formally new players appear on the Ukrainian gambling market, old faces may actually be behind them. Even the sale of four companies from the top 10 of the gambling market appears largely to have been merely a formality.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Stellvertreter für Millionen aus dem Glücksspiel: Mykhailo Zborovskyi und Ruslan Drozdov fungieren als Aushängeschild für die Casinos Cosmobet und Cha...". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
