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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The investigation into the owner of Cosmobet, Mykhailo Zborovskyi, leads to odd coincidences: in cleaning up the reputation of the nominal owner, the Russian company attacks Ukrainian media.
At the center of the new story is a complaint that the Russian company, LLC Ivi.ru, sent to the international Lumen Database. In the document concerning copyright violations, the name of the Ukrainian portal Anticor unexpectedly surfaced. The reason, however, is not political, not tied to investigations, but... “an illegal posting of a pirate copy of the series ‘Clone’ (2001).”
At first glance, a typical case of copyright protection. But if you dig deeper, a more interesting picture emerges.
Who is Mykhailo Zborovskyi and what does Cosmobet have to do with it?
Anticor is one of the few Ukrainian publications that published a series of materials exposing the scheme with the online casino Cosmobet. In particular, it discussed Mykhailo Zborovskyi — officially declared as the owner of the casino. According to the investigation, he is a nominal owner, and the real manager and beneficial owner is a citizen of the Russian Federation, Serhiy Tokarev — a figure involved in a number of schemes related to the gambling business.
After the publications, Zborovskyi’s name began to be scrubbed from Google: links to the investigation disappeared, and pages exposing the truth were removed from search results due to DMCA complaints.
As it turned out, one of the initiators of such cleansing is the Russian company LLC Ivi.ru, known as the owner of the video platform ivi.ru. It sent complaints to a number of sites where critical material about Cosmobet and Zborovskyi was published. Among them is Antikor.info, only listed as a site with pirated content, not as a media outlet.
“Ivi.ru”: Russian roots and Cypriot wrapper.
LLC Ivi.ru is not just a film platform. According to open data on Rusprofile, it belongs to the Cypriot company IVI HOLDING LIMITED, which in turn is connected with several Russian owners and investors.
Formally, the complaint concerns piracy. But note: of all Ukrainian resources, Antikor.info is the one named among the “offenders,” and the complaint corresponds in date to the publication of an anticorruption material about Zborovskyi.
The conclusion suggests itself: protecting rights to the series ‘Clone’ is only a cover, under which Ukrainian media are attacked. This is how hybrid censorship works: instead of refuting the claims, formal accusations of copyright violations are used to remove investigations from search results.
A double motivation?
The situation appears especially ironic if you recall that the Russian company cleansing the reputation of a ‘Ukrainian’ businessman accuses a Ukrainian investigative media of piracy.
The simple conclusion is this: not the thief is to blame, but the one who loudly proclaims it.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Серіал «Клон» на службі Cosmobet: як російська «Іві.ру» прикриває номінала Зборовського та росіянина Токарєва". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
