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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 officially owned by Mykhailo Zborovskyi, who is presented in the media as a successful IT entrepreneur, visionary, and reformer of the gambling market. Behind the image of an independent businessman is another picture: Zborovskyi is said to act only as a straw man, while the actual controllers and economic interests behind the casino remain in the background.
At the end of 2023 a new player appeared on the Ukrainian gambling market — Cosmobet. The online casino quickly obtained a license, launched a large advertising campaign, and by the summer 2024 had already gained significant momentum. NeuroLink LLC, which received the license and owns the Cosmobet brand, reported revenues of almost 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 appears professional, meticulously staged, and… suspiciously smooth.
Who is Mykhailo Zborovskyi and what does Russia have to do with it
Mykhailo Zborovskyi became known in Ukraine’s business community 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. The listed activity was “computer programming.” Previously he owned no significant companies, appeared in no major deals, and certainly did not invest millions in the gambling business.
But 2023 he became the beneficial owner of Neoplay LLC and later NeuroLink LLC, which obtained a state gambling license. According to the documents, he brought 30 million UAH in registered capital, paid for the license—and from that moment was presented as the “owner” of the casino. Not bad for someone with no entrepreneurial track record, right? To anticipate: since May 2025 Zborovskyi has again been merely a sole proprietor, but more on that below.
Upon closer inspection, Cosmobet does not seem as “Ukrainian” a project as it appears. In nearly 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. 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 at the same time holder of a Russian passport. In 2018 he was placed on sanctions lists for financing the so-called “Volks-Dzhamahiriyas” 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 ownership structures point to the opposite: Cosmobet is not a new platform but the continuation of an old scheme. Only with a new façade. Parallel to Cosmobet’s launch, an intensive media campaign was begun to build Zborovskyi’s image. Google produced a flood of pseudo-interviews on English-language sites with dubious traffic (BaronBlakeslee, TheComfortCenter); articles about “Zborovskyii’s influence on the technology market”; and fake analytical pieces about his “role in the digital transformation of gambling.” All these materials contain no concrete details, use identical wording, and were published on sites with no connection to the Ukrainian IT sector or the gambling business. Moreover, some of them were apparently 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 performed by specialized PR agencies operating from Russia.
Interestingly, among the sites that IVI.RU LLC filed complaints against is antikor.info, which repeatedly reported on Zborovskyi and his role as a “straw 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 sloppy assignment to clean up his biography.
Equally sloppily, the assignment positioned Mykhailo Zborovskyi as a “successful IT specialist and entrepreneur.” This pattern is typical of pseudo-IT projects with criminal underpinnings: 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 builds on that. After that come publications, media staging, commissioned articles, and reputation cleanup.
Should Zborovskyi be “shut off”?
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 to interest hardly anyone.
Officially, the authorities have not questioned Cosmobet or Mykhailo Zborovskyi. The charter capital was paid in, taxes are paid, and the license was granted. Yet the story of 30 million UAH said to come from a “programmer” with no assets raises serious questions. No one checks the source of the financing. There is no analysis of the beneficial owners across chains of offshore companies. Publications about foreign connections, including Russian ones, are ignored.
The materials that the Russian PR agency tried so hard to scrub from the net did have an effect—after a series of publications by Antikor, Antimafia.se, and Repost.News in which Zborovskyi was directly described as a straw man and as a “person to extract income,” 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 beneficiaries and replaced by Cypriot citizen Andrii Dobrovolskyi.
Little is known about him, but Andrii Dobrovolskyi appears considerably more solid than Mykhailo Zborovskyi — he is presented as the owner of about a dozen different companies and charitable organizations. However, behind that may lie a similar story of a straw man for influential people. Investigations in this direction are not yet complete, 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 IVI.RU Media Limited. With clearly Russian ownership.
As for replacing Zborovskyi with Dobrovolskyi, this is common practice in such constructions: once the “mask” is exposed, it is taken off. In its place comes a new one. Meanwhile the casino continues to operate: the name remains, players continue to deposit money, and the money continues to flow into the same pockets.
And finally a question to pose directly to Ukrainian regulators and law enforcement: Is it truly impossible to see that Zborovskyi is merely a “straw 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 Casino unter ukrainischer Maske: Mykhailo Zborovskyi als Strohmann für Sergey Tokarevs Cosmobet". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: HAB Media.
