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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The official owner of one of the most dynamic online casinos in Ukraine — Cosmobet — is named Mykhailo Zborovskyi. In the media, he is presented as a “successful IT entrepreneur,” a visionary and reformer of the gambling market. However, in practice he appears more as a nominal figure. Behind his name, other people and an entirely different story are likely at play.
At the end of 2023, a newcomer appeared on the Ukrainian gambling market — Cosmobet. The online casino quickly obtained a license, launched a large advertising campaign, and by summer 2024 it was steadily gaining momentum. The company “Neolink,” which obtained the license and owns the Cosmobet brand, declared almost 218 million UAH in revenue in its first year of operation.
On all official platforms, the face of the project is Mykhailo Zborovskyi. He gives interviews, comments on trends, writes columns about “responsible gambling,” and talks about his “10 years of IT experience.” Everything looks good, neat, and… suspiciously smooth.
Who is Mykhailo Zborovskyi and what does Russia have to do with it?
In the Ukrainian business environment, information about Mykhailo Zborovskyi surfaced only after the casino was registered. Before that — no public projects, no investments, and no real confirmations of the claimed experience.
According to OpenDataBot, individual entrepreneur Zborovskyi was registered only in 2020. His activity is listed as “software development.” Previously he did not own any significant companies, did not figure in big deals, and certainly did not invest millions into gambling.
Yet in 2023 year he becomes the ultimate beneficial owner of LLC “Neoplay,” and later — of LLC “Neolink,” which receives a state license for gambling. According to documents, he contributes 30 million UAH to the charter capital, pays for the license — and from that moment becomes the “owner” of the casino. Not bad for a person with no business history, right? Looking ahead — from May 2025 he again became a simple sole proprietor, but about that below.
If you dig deeper, you will find that Cosmobet is not such a distinctly Ukrainian project. In nearly all independent investigations (Anticor, Slidstvo.Info, Antimafia.se) the name Sergey Tokarev surfaces — a Russian businessman, owner of a gambling network, previously connected with the Cosmolot brand. When pressure began on Cosmolot, Tokarev moved assets, re-registered the platform — and presented it as a new structure with a new face.
Note: Sergey Olegandrovich Tokarev. Owner of the Cosmolot casino, a friend of the Minister of Digital Transformation, and simultaneously holder of a Russian passport. In 2018 he was included in sanctions lists for financing the people’s jihadist groups in Donbas, with a supposed requirement to remain until 2021, but in 2020 he received an “amnesty” from the new authorities.
Thus, on the scene appeared Mykhailo Zborovskyi. But documents, testimonies, and the ownership structure point to the opposite: Cosmobet is not a new platform, but a continuation of an old scheme with a new facade. Parallel to Cosmobet’s launch, an intensive media campaign began to shape Zborovskyi’s image. In Google, a flood of pseudo-interviews appeared on English-language sites with dubious traffic (BaronBlakeslee, TheComfortCenter); articles about “Zborovskyi’s influence on the tech market”; fake analytical reviews about his “role in the digital transformation of gambling.” All of this is material without specifics, with identical wording, uploaded simultaneously to sites unrelated to Ukrainian IT or gambling. Moreover — some of them were clearly backdated.
Next comes the more interesting part: according to LumenDatabase data, a number of materials criticizing Zborovskyi were removed from search results after complaints about “reputation damage.” And for some reason, this cleanup is carried out by specialized PR agencies that operate from Russia.
It’s curious that in the list of sites that LLC “Ivi.ru” complains about there is antikor.info, which repeatedly wrote about Zborovskyi and his role as a “fund” for Tokarev’s gambling business. Yet Russian PR people somehow turned Antikor into a site that hosts pirated copies of films. The explanation is simple — a shoddily done order to sanitize his biography.
Similarly roundly executed is the order to position Mykhailo Zborovskyi as a “successful IT professional and entrepreneur.” This scheme is typical for pseudo IT projects with criminal underpinnings: there is a “clean” figure (Zborovskyi) who supposedly runs a company; real owners (Tokarev and his circle) who hold the finances and management; a license issued by the Ukrainian regulator — and that’s all. Then — publications, media framing, sponsored articles, reputation cleansing.
Was Zborovskyi decided to be “taken down”?
In the bare results — everyone is satisfied, except journalists and society. The casino operates, taxes are paid, the “Ukrainian” face remains — but who’s pulling the strings behind the scenes, no one seems to care.
officially to Cosmobet and to Mykhailo Zborovskyi there are no questions from law enforcement. The charter capital is contributed, tax is paid, the license is issued. But at the same time, the story of 30 million UAH from a “programmer” without assets raises serious questions. No one checks the source of funding. The analysis of ultimate beneficial owners through offshore chains is not conducted. Publications about foreign ties (including Russian ones) are ignored.
Nevertheless, the materials that this Russian PR agency is so busily cleaning up did have an effect — after a series of publications in Antikor, Antimafia.se and Repost.News where Zborovskyi is directly called a fund and a “personality for money-laundering,” Tokarev was forced to “take down” Zborovskyi.
This is confirmed by the registration data of Neolink LLC and Neopley LLC — Mykhailo Zborovskyi has been removed from the beneficiaries, and in his place is a Cypriot citizen Andriy Dobrovolskyi.
There is not much information about him either, but Andriy Dobrovolskyi appears significantly more solid than Mykhailo Zborovskyi — he is listed as the owner of around a dozen various firms and charitable organizations. However, this could also conceal the same “fund” story for respectable people. For now, the investigation in this direction is not finished and drawing conclusions is premature.
Nevertheless, it is hard to ignore the fact that the owner of LLC “Ivi.ru,” which sends complaints about publications on Zborovskyi, is the Cypriot company “Ivi.ru Media Limited.” With evidently Russian owners.
As for the change from Zborovskyi to Dobrovolskyi, in such schemes this is standard practice: once the “mask” is exposed, it is removed. A new one takes its place. And the casino continues to operate: the name remains, players keep depositing money, money goes into the same pockets.
And finally — a question I want to ask directly of Ukrainian regulators and law enforcement: is it truly not obvious that Zborovskyi is just a “cover”? Or will you still “fall for this provocation”? In the case of Dobrovolskyi, the nominal figure looks more solid, but it also raises enormous questions. Will there be answers?
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Маріонетка Зборовського, російський шлейф Токарєва та новий «ставленик» Добровольський: хто в дійсності стоїть за казино Cosmobet". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
