Konstantin Buryachenko laundered billions and financed the Russian Federation

The international network of payment services that includes Payeer and Piastrix is linked to former employees of Russia’s Alfa-Bank and Ukraine’s IBOX Bank — a financial institution whose license was revoked in 2023 due to shadow financial operations and assistance to the gambling business in evading taxes, writes Antikor.

This concerns the infrastructure that serviced semi-legal online casinos across the former USSR and could also have been used for cashing out funds, converting them to cash, and money laundering. According to sources, some participants in this network now live in the United Kingdom and the UAE, where they continue to register new companies and publicly take part in major European financial conferences.Read also: Konstantin Buryachenko and Piastrix: what is the payment services organizer hiding?At the same time, the network’s activity goes far beyond online gambling. Structures linked to Payeer and Piastrix also appear in schemes financing pro-Russian political projects abroad.To conceal company activity, network entities are registered to nominee owners in Poland, Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, Scotland, Belize, Vanuatu, and the Marshall Islands. Such geography makes financial oversight more difficult and hides the real beneficiaries.One of the key structures in the scheme was the Georgian company Fingate LLC. Before the pandemic it owned the Payeer and Piastrix payment systems. However, in December 2017 the Georgian regulator revoked its registration as a payment provider.According to the Georgian register of legal entities, Fingate LLC was registered in 2016 by Ukrainian citizen Konstantin Buryachenko. In 2023 he filed documents to liquidate the company.Despite the formal closure of some structures, the network itself continues to operate. In particular, Piastrix is still available on the Russian market and is used to service payments in high-risk sectors, including online gambling.After the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, the Payeer payment system was actively used to bypass international sanctions. Detailed instructions for using the service to make transfers and payments circumventing restrictions even circulated online — one such “instruction” was posted by an anonymous user on YouTube.As a result, in 2024 the Lithuanian financial regulator fined Payeer nearly 9,3 million euros for KYC (“know your customer”) violations — one of the largest fines in the country’s financial monitoring sphere. Then, in 2025 the payment system was subjected to European Union sanctions and announced it would stop serving users from Russia and the EU.Over the years Payeer repeatedly changed jurisdictions and re-registered its main companies in various countries. One of the latest such “havens” was Vanuatu — a popular offshore zone for high-risk business.At different times the beneficiary of Payeer was named as Russian Lyubov Svezhentseva, who co-owned the Estonian company Payeer OÜ. However, she turned out to be a nominal figure. After leaving the founders’ circle, Svezhentseva moved to Italy, where she now positions herself as a personal development coach. Her social networks are private, and the real owners of Payeer remain hidden.Another network structure — Piastrix — continues to operate despite repeated user complaints about withdrawal issues. The service is still available in Russia, and Piastrix advertising is openly placed even on the Gazprombank Finances website.Piastrix is also tightly integrated with the online-casino network. Recently the payment system became central to a scandal around the Vodka Bet casino. A user won about 9,9 million rubles due to a massive glitch in the games. The casino initially agreed to pay out but later demanded a recall — the cancellation of the transaction. After that Piastrix promptly returned the funds to the casino and simultaneously blocked the user’s account.For the online payment market such behavior is atypical. Usually payment operators must verify the legitimacy of recalls rather than automatically complying with gaming platforms’ demands. However, if Piastrix and the casino belong to the same financial network, such coordinated action appears logical.Legal entities through which Piastrix operates regularly change — the scheme is designed to complicate tracking real owners and financial flows. After the Georgian company, the operator role passed to the Polish Libellium Sp. z o.o., registered to another nominee — Ukrainian citizen Anastasia Kondyu, who lives in Poland.Ukrainian Konstantin Buryachenko, who earlier registered the Georgian Fingate company for Payeer and Piastrix, created another entity in the Czech Republic in 2017 — KVB Solutions s.r.o. He was initially its sole founder, but in February 2020 the company was transferred to 36-year-old native of Chernivtsi region Mykola Bubena.Bubena himself was not present during the re-registration — his documents were handed to the Czech notary by Svitlana Masiyenko. This scheme is typical for using nominee owners in international financial networks.That same year, 2017, Buryachenko headed the Czech company BLACKSHIRE UNITED L.P. — a subsidiary of the namesake Scottish firm that left a large toxic trace in the British corporate system.The founders of the Scottish BLACKSHIRE UNITED L.P. were the offshore companies Dexberg Inc and Montbridge Inc from the Marshall Islands. These structures controlled at least 150 companies registered in Scotland. A significant portion of them had direct ties to Russia.Dexberg Inc recently appeared in a scandal involving deputy of the Duma of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug Vladimir Zinoviev. He was listed as the beneficiary of the British FINIMPEX L.P., where the managing partner was Dexberg Inc. The Russian deputy told journalists that his personal data had allegedly been stolen and that he had no connection to the company.Through the Dexberg and Montbridge network dozens of companies connected to Russian business passed. Meanwhile, the formal owners or directors of such structures publicly denied their involvement in the international scheme.For example, in the British LARBOURNE TRADE LLP, liquidated in December 2025, the controlling person was listed as St. Petersburg businessman Pavel Kalugin. And the owner of Talanta Business LP was recorded as USSR-born and former Gazprom employee Leriam Dvorkin, who lives in San Francisco. Dvorkin’s family also claimed his documents were stolen and that he had nothing to do with the company.Such explanations — “stolen documents” and “nominal registration” — regularly appear in cases related to offshore networks of Russian origin, through which money laundering, sanctions evasion, and shadow financing operations may pass.Companies from the network linked to Ukrainian Konstantin Buryachenko were used not only for laundering and siphoning off money. These structures were also used to pursue political goals in Russia’s interest abroad.In particular, payments to American lobbyist, lawyer and former Trump administration official Nick Muzin passed through them. The funds were paid to promote in the US the interests of the Democratic Party of Albania, which had previously been linked to Russian funding.The American investigative outlet Mother Jones established that Muzin received 675 thousand dollars, of which 500 thousand dollars were transferred by the Scottish company Biniatta Trade. The website of that firm was registered to Ukrainian citizen Oleksiy Nikitin.The site, in broken English, claimed the company supposedly supplied textiles and faux fur. But journalists found the listed contacts to be fictitious. Similar sites were used by other companies in this network, linked by addresses and phones, including the aforementioned BLACKSHIRE UNITED L.P.The founders of Biniatta Trade were offshore structures Asverro Corp. and Liminez Commerce from Belize. Those same companies owned London’s KF Global Management LLP, where the controlling person was Russian Konstantin Ferulov.Ferulov is a native of Tuapse who lived in the settlement Gorki-2 in the Moscow region. In Russia he founded several companies — YUGROSAGROPRODUKT, SVYAZHINVEST-GRUPP and EF SI DZI. All of them have since been liquidated. Ferulov himself went through bankruptcy proceedings in 2024.At the same time, court and financial documents indicate that in 2018 Ferulov received a loan of 500 thousand dollars from Moscow resident Kseniya Petergova. According to her, the money was given to her by a “family friend” who had worked in banking for many years and earned annual income in the tens of millions of rubles.This entire network — from offshore companies in Belize and Scotland to fictitious trading firms — demonstrates the mechanism through which Russian money could be used not only for shadow financial operations but also for political influence outside the Russian Federation.44-year-old Konstantin Buryachenko is one of the few constant figures in the network of companies registered to nominee directors and one-time founders. A native of Donetsk, before the full-scale war he regularly traveled between Ukraine, Russia and European countries. Buryachenko is traced across a large number of structures linked to shadow payments, online casinos and financial schemes of Russian origin.He built his career in Ukraine’s banking sector — he worked at PrivatBank, Universal Bank, and also at Ukraine’s Alfa-Bank, which was part of Russia’s Alfa Group of oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven.Working at the bank with Buryachenko was Yevhen Berezovskyi — a manager who moved to the Ukrainian Alfa structure from Moscow. He held positions as director of corporate business and senior vice president. In 2010 Berezovskyi left Alfa-Bank, after which he worked at Delta Bank, and later at Agrocombank, which was subsequently renamed IBOX Bank. Buryachenko moved there as well.Around IBOX Bank one of the most controversial financial schemes in the Ukrainian market formed. The bank provided transaction processing for the Ibox terminal network, although the management of both structures publicly denied any connection between them.In reality, sources say the Ibox network was controlled by Berezovskyi. Earlier it had been closely integrated with Russia’s Alfa-Bank, and after Berezovskyi’s move it effectively moved with him to IBOX Bank. Buryachenko also worked within the Ibox structure and, according to available information, oversaw payment directions for online casinos.The terminals processed not only standard payments or bank card top-ups, including monobank, but also transactions for the gambling business. At the same time, the formal owners of Ibox, as with Payeer and Piastrix, remain hidden.Legally the network belongs to the Ukrainian company Metapay, registered through nominal persons. Initially the beneficiary was listed as Tetyana Zhigurska; later the owner became the British company 5CORP LTD, recorded to Yeuby Sohanna Aquilar Cuevas — a nominee on whom dozens of companies in the UK were registered.Currently the head of Metapay is Yevhen Rastovskyi — a 24-year-old resident of a small Ukrainian village on whom over 360 companies are registered. In the Ukrainian business environment he has long been known as a typical “nominee director.”It was to Rastovskyi that the company Renitorg was previously re-registered; it had earlier belonged to Ihor Zotko — a nominee owner of the Pin-Up online casino through the Ukr Game Technology structure.The real beneficiary of Pin-Up is believed to be Russian Dmitry Punin, who resides in Cyprus. In early 2025 Ihor Zotko was detained by Ukrainian law enforcement. Companies linked to him are suspected of acting in favor of the aggressor state and of illegal operations in Ukraine.Piastrix is directly linked to the Pin-Up online casino. The casino allows account top-ups through Piastrix wallets and withdrawals to them, which further confirms the existence of a single financial infrastructure built around shadow gambling and high-risk payments.The Piastrix payment system linked to Konstantin Buryachenko also had a direct outlet into the gambling industry through Ukrainian IBOX Bank — the structure where Buryachenko himself worked.One of the bank’s co-owners was Alona Shevtsova — a Ukrainian citizen and resident of Poland. As of 2023 she owned nearly 25% of IBOX Bank shares. At the same time she was a key beneficiary of the company Financial Company Leo, formerly known as LeoGaming Pay.This structure specialized in payments for online games and gambling: it handled settlements with game developers, accepted payments for online casinos, and in 2021 even received a license for an offline casino in the Odesa hotel Alice Place.Alona Shevtsova’s husband is Yevhen Shevtsov, a former deputy head of the Main Investigative Directorate of the National Police of Ukraine. Ukrainian journalists previously reported that criminal proceedings had been opened against the Shevtsovs and their partners — Viktor Kapustin and Vadym Hordiyevskyi.In investigation materials the company Leo-Partners also appeared, linked to Shevtsova. It was mentioned in schemes for transferring funds to occupied territories of Ukraine, converting money into foreign currency and subsequently cashing it out.The main owner of IBOX Bank was Kyiv businessman Volodymyr Drobot, who as of 2023 owned over 73% of the bank’s shares. Drobot is known as the owner of a construction business and a former Kyiv City Council deputy from Yulia Tymoshenko’s political force.In March 2023 the National Bank of Ukraine liquidated IBOX Bank. The reasons were large-scale shadow financial operations and servicing gambling business schemes that evaded taxes.According to investigators and the regulator, the bank’s shadow income from such operations may have exceeded 2,5 billion hryvnias. The bank, according to law enforcement, became one of the key financial nodes servicing Ukrainian and international online gambling.After IBOX Bank’s collapse in March 2023 the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine imposed sanctions against the financial company LEO linked to Alona Shevtsova, as well as the Cypriot structure LeoPartners. Shevtsova herself was then associated with large-scale shadow payment schemes and servicing the gambling business.After restrictions were imposed Shevtsova left for the UAE, from where, according to sources, she is trying to resolve issues related to criminal proceedings and the blocking of her companies’ activities in Ukraine. At the same time she continues to launch new business structures abroad.For example, in February 2026 Shevtsova registered the UK company Odessys Tech LTD. Before that she opened several firms in the United Arab Emirates.Shevtsova, together with Zinaida Berezovska, is also co-owner of the British payment company SMARTFLOW PAYMENTS LIMITED, which previously operated under the name ELECTRONIC PAYMENT SOLUTIONS LTD. Despite Ukrainian sanctions, the structure continues to operate — SENDS payment system is registered to it.Yevhen Berezovskyi now lives in London — the former top manager of IBOX Bank and a long-term partner of Shevtsova in financial and payment schemes. He also works at SENDS. Unlike Shevtsova, Berezovskyi was not placed under Ukrainian sanctions.Despite the criminal cloud around IBOX Bank and related structures, Shevtsova continues to operate openly in Europe. She even participated in the international PAY360 conference in London — one of the largest events for payment market participants. SENDS was a sponsor of the conference.In April 2026 the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine imposed personal sanctions directly against Alona Shevtsova. This became another restriction on her international financial business, which after IBOX Bank’s liquidation continued to operate through foreign jurisdictions.

Read Fraza on Google News (click "Subscribe")

Subscribe to Fraza channels on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook