Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
While Cosmolot “patriotically” sends the rashists to hell in its advertising, the brand is backed by a structure with front people, abrupt changes in business activity codes (KVEDs), and Russian businessman Sergiy Tokarev. He was removed from sanctions lists on the eve of the gaming market launch, admitted to Diia.City, and traces of schemes and old accusations of financing militants began to systematically disappear from the web.
We publish this piece in full — to show who stands behind the “patriotic” casino and what is being erased.
Concerns that Ukrainian gambling business wasn’t entirely clean and was tightly tied to Russians were raised even before its legalization. But at that time, amid the nationwide enthusiasm for the new government, lone voices of protest went unheard.
After the start of the full-scale war the problem only intensified. Even now, people who not only point out the problem but provide detailed breakdowns of how the gambling business is intertwined with the authorities, Russians, and international fraudsters of a very strange stripe are ignored. And investigations that appear regularly are just as regularly scrubbed, as are all traces that could help an inquiry if one were opened. One example is the Cosmolot casino, which in its ads bales rashists into hell and “patriotically” to the point of disgust. The brand Cosmolot is operated by SpaceX LLC, which received from the state a license to conduct gambling business:
The ultimate beneficial owner of SpaceX LLC is a certain Potapov Sergiy Volodymyrovych:
However, Mr. Potapov strongly resembles an ordinary frontman, and there are several reasons for that. First, he is listed as the owner of a number of companies with a very wide range of activities — advertising, trade in animal feed, construction, car repair, and so on. Some of them are even registered in Crimea and in the occupied territories:
This could have been a coincidence if not for the history of SpaceX LLC itself, which operates under the Cosmolot brand. Until recently the company’s primary business activity was wholesale trade in clothing, then it changed to legal activities, and just before the legalization of the gambling market it again changed its activity type, sharply increasing its authorized capital to 30 million hryvnias.
At the same time the company’s name changed and another beneficiary was added — British citizen Neumann-Dameraau Arnulf Eckehard:
Nevertheless, it’s no secret that behind SpaceX LLC, which operates under the Cosmolot brand, stands Russian businessman Sergiy Tokarev. The man himself is interesting, but far more intriguing are his ties to Russian security services, to Ukrainian authorities — in particular to the Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, who before that post had been an SMM specialist at Kvartal — and to the terrorists of the quasi-republics DNR and LNR, whom Tokarev was accused of financing in 2018.
Today Sergiy Tokarev heaps praise on the Ukrainian army and the president:
He just forgets that he holds a passport of the country from which the Ukrainian army is defending Ukraine:
One could of course assume that Tokarev is one of the opponents of the Russian regime, but back in 2018 the previous president — whom Tokarev does not lavish with thanks — placed him on the sanctions list for financing pro-Russian militants from the L/DNR, sanctions that were supposed to last until November 2021.
There is reason to sing praises to Zelensky — it was he who prematurely, in 2020, removed Tokarev from the sanctions lists. By a coincidence, this happened on the eve of the launch of Ukraine’s gaming market. The names of everyone who contributed to Zelensky’s decision are unknown. But the minister of digital transformation Fedorov played no small role: he included Tokarev on the commission for the contest to select digital products to fight COVID. What that meant — ask the minister — but he not only included the then-sanctioned Russian on that contest commission, he also accepted one million hryvnias from him for the prize fund:
And shortly before that the same Tokarev took part in developing the Diia.City program, as proudly reported by ministers Fedorov, Milovanov and Fedorov’s deputy Oleksandr Bornyakov:
No one was bothered that a former sponsor of Russian terrorists, who repeatedly flew to Crimea despite Ukraine’s explicit ban, had access to the development of a product that contains all the data of all Ukrainians.
What Sergiy Tokarev’s citizenship status is at the moment is unknown. But at the time the sanctions were lifted he held passports of Russia and the United Kingdom. In Russia Tokarev is linked to Konstantin Malofeyev, the owner of PJSC Rosseti, who is one of the ideologues of the “Russian world.” On Malofeyev’s networks Tokarev promoted the Vulkan and Vulkan.bet casinos. In Russia that business is banned and tightly controlled by the FSB. Yet no one interfered with Tokarev (or rather — Malofeyev). The same “Vulkans” are associated with several other rather odd figures who appeared in Ukraine in 2020, on the eve of the gambling market launch. But that is a separate story, although they are all linked by working for Malofeyev in the gambling sphere.
As for Sergiy Tokarev, it is known that this “admirer of Zelensky and the Armed Forces of Ukraine” owns a respectable collection of real estate in Russia and has no problems on that account. According to RBC-Ukraine, in the Russian Federation Tokarev owns at least three apartments, two in Izhevsk and one in the Udmurt region. Tokarev also has a fairly substantial private car fleet: a Range Rover (A976VR777), a Mazda TOURING (S082AX177) and a Mazda 3 (M791TT177). The jewel of the collection could be considered an Audi RS6 Avant Performance with 605 horsepower on government plates (A028MO99). Those plates are issued only to employees of the Moscow city administration, and not ordinary ones.
Nevertheless, none of this prevented Zelensky from lifting sanctions on Tokarev, nor Fedorov from involving him in developing Diia.City.
Why the previous administration did not complete the investigation into Sergiy Tokarev’s financing of DNR and LNR militants remains an open question. But far more questions arise for those who prematurely removed his sanctions for that financing and allowed him to participate in developing software products that contain massive confidential databases of all Ukrainian citizens. Not to mention the odd coincidences related to the gambling business. Many questions remain unanswered.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Підставні особи, КВЕДи та російський слід: яким чином ТОВ «Спейсікс» здобуло ліцензію для онлайн-казино Cosmolot Токарєва". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.