Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
While law enforcement agencies investigate wide-scale proceedings about potential links with the state aggressor, Justice plays by the strict rules of classic bureaucracy. The Dnipropetrovsk Administrative Court of Appeal issued a sensational ruling, returning the license for a land-based casino to Favbet VIP Casino, associated with Andriy Matyukha.
The regulator tried to block the activity due to the Russian trace, but the court decided that officials simply rewrote other people’s reports instead of gathering their own evidence, according to the investigative agency Absolution.
A letter from the State Bureau of Investigation against administrative logic.
The story began in early May, when the State Bureau of Investigation sent a troubling letter to the regulator PlayCity. As part of a criminal case, law enforcement indicated that the ultimate beneficiary of the company, Andriy Matyukha, allegedly has a Russian individual tax number, registration in the Russian Federation, and even the notorious passport of the aggressor country. It is noted that the gambling law directly prohibits residents of the occupying state from owning or controlling gambling business in Ukraine.
The regulator reacted immediately: it conducted a non-visits audit, drafted an act, and canceled the license, deeming that waiting for a court verdict for years during full-scale war is simply unacceptable.
But the company’s lawyers fought back. They claimed that no Russian passport exists, and the available files are a crude montage. Later they submitted expert opinions to the court: geotag data from iCloud confirmed that on the day supposedly issuing the document the businessman was in Zagreb, and portrait expert analysis contradicted the identity of the persons.
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