Almost imperceptibly for the general public, a new media tycoon is growing in Ukraine, buying up the media one by one. Over the past year, Tetiana Snopko, a resident of the city of Dnipro, has already bought two media holdings and is clearly preparing for the next purchases.
In January 2023, Tetiana Snopko became the sole owner of Ekonomika Communication Hub LLC with an authorized capital of UAH 1 million 330 thousand and Mediamania LLC, which operate three publications — the Delo.ua business portal, the womo.ua women’s portal, the mmr .ua marketing publication, as well as the TOP-100 printed rating magazine.
Six months later, Snopko, who is little known in the media environment, registers Hub Glavkom LLC with an authorized capital of UAH 10 million, and in July 2023 buys Ukrainian Media Systems LLC, which owns Glavkom.
Tetyana Snopko (in the center) with the editorial staff of the Glavkom publication. Photo: Facebook Mick Pidvezianiy
And so, on August 31, 2023, another Media Hub Ukraine LLC with an authorized capital of UAH 3 million appears in the register of legal entities, in which Tetiana Davydivna Snopko is the only beneficiary. According to Ukrainian media market participants, the newly minted owner of five media outlets is preparing for new purchases of Ukrainian media, including Telegram channels.
According to market participants, the cost of the three publications and the magazine of the Ekonomika hub at the time of their purchase by Tetiana Snopko could be from 0.7 to 1.3 million dollars, Glavkom — from 2.5 to 3 million dollars.
We tried to figure out who Tetiana Snopko is and where she got so much money to literally buy up national Ukrainian media one by one. And why does she need them, given that the media in Ukraine today, due to the decline in the advertising market due to the war, is more of a problem asset than a profitable one, which is visible to the naked eye even in the company "Communication Hub "Ekonomika" LLC, whose revenue, according to Youcontrol , "sunk" from UAH 13.7 million in 2021 to UAH 4.8 million, that is, almost three times.
Who is Tatyana Snopko?
According to information from open sources, a 37-year-old resident of the city of Dnipro, Tetiana Snopko, was an employee throughout her career and did not have her own business. According to the Register of Real Estate Rights, she owns only a small two-room apartment with a total area of 42 square meters in an old panel house in the city of Dnipro on Bohdan Khmelnitsky Avenue. Snopko also owns a 2017 BMW X3.
The house where Tetiana Snopko lives in the city of Dnipro. Photo: Google View
In Dnipro, Snopko held the position of editor-in-chief of a sports online publication, and after more than 8 years worked as the director of communications at Noosphere Ventures. This is a company whose portfolio includes dating sites, online gambling, as well as high-tech startups and social projects in the field of education. Noosphere Ventures is owned by Maksym Polyakov, a well-known Ukrainian entrepreneur originally from Zaporizhzhia, who in 2022 ranked 11th in the list of the richest Ukrainians with a fortune of $800 million according to Forbes magazine.
After the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Snopko moved to the Czech Republic, where, according to her friends, she was even looking for work , but at the end of 2022, the woman began to buy Ukrainian media and register an LLC with millions of authorized capital.
This is despite the fact that Noosphere Snopko had almost the minimum wage: according to the tax authorities, in the period 2018-2021, Snopko received a salary of 6300 to 13500 UAH per month from the public organization "Noosphere". However, these were not her only incomes. Since 2013, Snopko has also worked as an individual entrepreneur with the main activity of "Data processing, posting information on websites and related activities".
According to her tax returns, Tetiana Snopko received an annual income of UAH 928 thousand in 2018, UAH 1 million 45 thousand in 2019, UAH 1 million 102 thousand in 2020, and UAH 944 thousand in 2021, and UAH 944 thousand in 2021. That is, in the last four years before the full-scale war, when Snopko was looking for a job in the Czech Republic, she managed to earn about UAH 4 million. Given that, probably, she has been living on this money all this time, this will not be enough to buy several media outlets at once and register enterprises with authorized capitals in the amount of UAH 13 million.
Where did Tatiana Snopko get her money?
Tetiana Snopko refused to answer this question in a comment to Forbes. Speaking about why she needs these media, she herself admitted that it is unrealistic to make money on media as a business today. "I can’t even say that the market is wild. There is none... I come from the IT industry, for me media is primarily a product, a platform, and work with traffic. For me, this is a digital asset first of all," she said, without explaining what this means and what are the benefits of such purchases for her today.
Our sources in the editorial office of Glavkom clarified the picture a little, saying that Snopko is far from the ultimate beneficiary of the media she bought, but rather only an intermediary and an "appointed" person. The real buyer of all these media is entrepreneur Maxim Krippa, about whom very little is known until recently.
Maxim Krippa
Maksym Krippa is a long-time partner of Tatiana Snopko’s former employer, Max Polyakov. In recent years, Snopko has been providing PR manager services to both of them until today. According to Forbes, when the publication published an article about Krippa, it was Tetiana Snopko who communicated with the editorial office on his behalf and representing his interests. When asked directly about her relationship with him, she replied that they were just acquaintances, and described their cooperation as a "consultation".
Many Internet resources indicate information that in the early "tenths" Maxim Krippa and Maxim Polyakov together developed a business in the field of gambling and online dating. As of 2013, Krippa and Polyakov owned online casinos GGS and GMS, which is confirmed by the court case materials at the time on the division of the business with their Russian partners Sergey Tokarev and Rustam Gilfanov. Later, Polyakov and Krippa began to organize an online casino under the Vulk@n brand and actively developed it in many countries, including Ukraine, where gambling was banned until 2020.
Therefore, in 2016, the Main Investigative Department of the SBU opened criminal proceedings No. 22015000000000379 under Part 1 of Article 203-2 (Illegal activities in the field of gambling) and Part 2 of Article 258-5 (Financing of terrorism) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The investigation established that, contrary to the ban on the gambling business in Ukraine, Maksym Valeriyovych Polyakov and Maksym Volodymyrovych Krippa created a number of websites www.vulkan-champion.co/ru/ru, www.casino-club-online under the brand name "Vulkan@n". com, www.casino-velcam.com, www.vulkan-russia.com and www.vulcanoriginals.com, through which online casino services were provided.
According to the SBU, Polyakov was the actual organizer and investor of the online casino "Vulk@n", and Maksym Krippa was the head of the IT company CloneFish, which developed games for online casinos and provided administration and technical support for the sites of the online casino "Vulk@n". ” and their protection against electronic interference by representatives of state bodies. In 2014, CloneFish became part of another company of Maxim Crippa, EvoPlay, which still develops games for online casinos.
In addition, in order to legalize the funds received from the gambling business, Max Polyakov, as stated in the criminal proceedings, together with his companions Igor Spodyn and Igor Boshnyakov created the public organization "Noosphere Association" in Dnipro (in which Tetyana Snopro worked) and "Aurora Technologies" LLC, to whose current bank accounts money received from the illegal activity of the online casino "Vulk@n" was transferred, which was "subsequently transferred to the accounts of other companies with signs of fictitiousness, transferred to cash and distributed among participants in criminal activities" .
Moreover, as follows from a series of rulings of the Shevchenkiv District Court of the city of Kyiv from January 2017, part of the money withdrawn to offshore companies controlled by Maksym Polyakov was further processed and transferred to finance the "DPR" and "LPR". Obviously, that is why the second article in the criminal proceedings was "Financing of terrorism". How this case ended is unknown. Taking into account the fact that there are no more documents about her in the open registers, as well as the fact that in a number of other court cases against Maxim Crippa (in particular, about tax violations and driving under the influence of alcohol), he managed to avoid responsibility, rather than that’s all, and in this case, Polyakov and Crippa also succeeded.
Russian roots "Vulk@nu"
For Ukraine, after the decision to legalize the gambling market adopted in 2020, it is not news that the lion’s share of it (mostly shadowy) is occupied by players with Russian roots. In 2022, the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries already issued licenses to work in Ukraine to the Russian bookmaker 1xBet, which tried to disguise itself as the Ukrainian LLC "Your Betting Company". As a result, after the raised public outcry, KRAIL had to cancel the issued licenses, but no one promised that other Russian operators of the gambling business would not be released to the market.
On April 15, 2021, "Conqueror" LLC received from KRAIL a license to provide online casino services under the Vulk@n brand on the website vulkancasino.ua. "Konkureror" LLC is registered to the offshore "Darlocks Limited" (99.9%) and Stanislav Rudenko (0.1%), a native of the city of Nizhyn, Chernihiv region. However, before 2021, the beneficiary of Conqueror LLC was a resident of Cyprus, Fedir Fedorov (Theodor Teodoru), the founder of the Novolodzhik company, whose director in 2010-2015, according to YouControl , was Maxim Krippa. It was two months before receiving a license to work in Ukraine that Conqueror LLC removed Fedor Fedorov from its founders.
But the owner of the trademark "Vulk@n" in Ukraine is the Cypriot company "Dareos LTD" (DAREOS LTD). In 2021, the right to TM Vulka@n was registered with the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union for the same company. In Russia, the trademark "Vulk@n" is registered to the company "Dareos Holding LTD" (DAREOS HOLDING LTD), which is identical to the company "Dareos LTD". They are both registered at the same address in Cyprus and have the same persons in the management structure.
Thus, the owners of the "Vulk@n" trademark in Ukraine and the Russian Federation are fully related non-resident companies, which indicates a single business beneficiary in all countries where the "Vulk@n" online casino sites operate.
Who is he? We found the answer to this in the materials of the administrative case of the World Intellectual Property Organization D2021-0892 from 2021, where the already mentioned Cypriot company Dareos Ltd., which manages the trademark "Вулк@н" (VULK@N, VOLC@NO, VULC@N , ВУЛК@Н), filed a complaint against a citizen of Ukraine Serhiy Myronenko for illegal use of its trademarks and domain names on five websites, including vlk-casino-online.com and fan-vulcan.com and others that provided gambling services under the "Vulk@n" brand.
In the materials of this case, the plaintiff provided WIPO with data on his rights to the "Vulk@n" brand, as well as information on who owns these trademarks.
This entity (Dareos Ltd.) manages the trademarks of Ritzio International Group and group member Ritzio Purchase Limited (collectively referred to as "Ritzio"), an entertainment group operating in the Russian Federation since 1992 and in other European markets since 2005. The group’s website is at www.ritzio.eu. According to the complaint, the plaintiff licenses the relevant trademarks to Ritzio," the case documents state. Another case in the World Intellectual Property Organization of 2015 No. D2015-0222 points to the Russian Ritzio as the ultimate beneficiary of the entire ecosystem of gambling sites "Vulk@n". , according to the materials of which the company EvoPlay LLC filed a complaint against the citizen of the Russian Federation Timur Ziganshin for his illegal use of domains called "Vulk@n" in Russia. In its complaint, EvoPlay, a Ukrainian IT company, noted that in December 2014 it also received exclusive rights to use the TM "Vulk@n" from the Russian Ritzio International Group.
In other words, the Ukrainian company was engaged in the development of the Russian gambling business already at the height of Russian aggression against Ukraine, and also actively protecting it from the illegal use of trademarks in Russia itself.
EvoPlay is considered one of the largest Ukrainian IT companies, which positions itself as an international game provider in the field of gambling with offices in Kyiv, Lviv, Prague (Czech Republic) and Limassol (Cyprus) and develops games for online casinos. Mainly for "Vulk@nu", all of whose sites both in Ukraine and in the Russian Federation use EvoPlay games.
One of the Russian casino sites "Vulk@n" notes that the developer of the games presented on the site is the Ukrainian company EvoPlay of Maxim Crippa
The founders of Evoplay Entertainment LLC, registered in Kyiv, are the Cypriot company EvoPlay LTD and the citizen of Ukraine Ivan Kravchuk, the ultimate beneficiary is a certain Cypriot Georgiou Savvas. However, the actual owner of the company is Maksym Crippa, which is confirmed by a number of participants in the gambling market in Ukraine, as well as the archives of the SBU, which established Crippa’s direct connection to EvoPlay as part of the criminal proceedings. Well, and one more small trace that Krippa did not have time to "clean up" on the network, what he has been doing lately, trying to hide his connection with the "Vulk@n" casino.
One of Maxim Kripa’s phone numbers 06750...84 in the GetContact service, which provides information about how a particular number is signed in users’ contacts, has the tag "Maxim Vladimirovich Evoplay Kripa".
In turn, the telephone number 06744...85 of Oksana Kovalova (Miroshnychenko), who was also involved in the criminal proceedings of the SBU against Max Kripa and Max Polyakov in 2016 as their accountant in the "Vulk@n" project, gives the following tags: "Oksana Bukhg Krip "Oksana Jurist Evo", "Oksana Jurist Vulk@n Dnipro", "Oksana EvoPlay".
Ukrainian money to finance the Russian army?
The Russian Ritzio holding is the actual creator of the gaming brand "Vulk@n", which was born from the "zeroes" in Russia. After the official ban on gambling in the Russian Federation, the company began to develop the brand in the countries of Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, as well as in Germany, Italy and Croatia, where Ritzio operates more than 200 gambling halls under the signs Vulk@n, Vulk@n Stern and Vulc@no della Fortuna, as well as the websites www.vulkanvegas.com and www.vulkanvegas-online.com with their respective mobile applications.
Advertising of the "Vulk@n" casino in Moscow, 2005. Photo: Wikipedia, article about Ritzio Entertainment Group
One of the Vulk@n gaming clubs in Europe
The Ritzio holding belongs to Russian billionaire Oleg Boyk, who also owns the Finstar holding and the Riv Gosh perfumery chain. As of 2014, Russian Oleg Boyko owned the Ukrainian private lottery "Patriot", which through the Cypriot company Cehriba Investments Limited was part of the Finstar investment holding.
Russian businessman Oleg Boyko
As "Our Money" reported in August 2014, Oleg Boyko earned money from lotteries at that time not only in Ukraine, but also in his homeland. In the Russian Federation, his lottery was called "Victory", and, as journalists discovered at the time, it directed its income to support the Russian army, which had already annexed the Ukrainian Crimea and was waging a war in Donbas. In 2016, PJSC "Patriot" was sanctioned by the NSDC of Ukraine "in connection with the involvement of Russian businessmen and possible financing of the Russian army."
Meanwhile, in the summer of 2015, law enforcement officers searched the office of the EvoPlay company at 1 Naberezhno-Pecherska Street in Kyiv on the suspicion that this company was working for the Russian oligarch Oleg Boyk. During the search, a server with data on the company’s activities, some office equipment, gaming machines, accounting documentation with several dozen seals and stamps of various companies were seized.
"Part of the profit from the EvoPlay campaign apparently went directly to the Russian billionaire Oleg Boyk, because the company Ritzio International, owned by him, has an exclusive agreement with the EvoPlay company to present in the online entertainment industry its property - the trademark "Вулк@н", under how slot machine salons used to work," the media reported at the time.
That is, only six months after journalists published information that Russian businessman Oleg Boyko, the owner of the Ukrainian lottery, directs his income to finance Russian aggression against Ukraine, Polyakov and Krippa enter into a partnership with Boyko, obtaining the rights to use the brand from him "Vulk@n" manages the casino sites in its interests, which involves a regular fixed fee or a percentage of the profit to its owner.
The empire is expanding. NAVI, GGBet, MainCast
As already mentioned above, in recent years, Max Crippa tried in every possible way to hide this story and his connection with the Russian gambling market, erasing any mention of him in connection with the casino "Vulk@n" on the Internet. And this is understandable - in the conditions of the aggressive war of the Russian Federation, building a business in Ukraine with such a past would be difficult to say the least. And, it must be said, Crippa in some sense managed to confuse his tracks and start buying companies, real estate and mass media in Ukraine with the money earned from the Russian "gamer", without drawing attention to himself as a business partner of a Russian billionaire who supports aggression against Ukraine.
So, in July 2022, Max Crippa became the owner of the eSports brand NAVI, a club whose teams earned $18.7 million in prize money over 12 years. The founder and owner of the company was Oleksandr Kokhanovsky, who, according to the Russian Forbes, was considered one of the most influential people in e-sports in the post-Soviet space as of 2019.
Despite the criticism, NAVI neither before nor after the change of ownership did not consider the participation of Russian players in its teams, who are still part of NAVI, a problem. For example, Russians Andriy Kiprskyi, Dmytro Ilyushin, Artem Adarkin and Oleksandr Pirogov are still listed on the NAVI website as players of their teams. On June 20, 2022, in the midst of a full-scale war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, NAVI announced on its website that it was returning Ivan Kapustin to its ranks, without mentioning at the same time that he is Russian. And in November 2022, it was reported that NAVI became the champions of the PUBG Global Championship 2022 in Dubai, for which they received more than 1 million dollars in prize money, and the best player of the tournament, who received an additional 10 thousand dollars, was Artem Adarkin, a citizen of the Russian Federation and a player from Ukraine NAVI.
Kokhanovsky’s soft position towards the Russian Federation, as well as Crippa’s, is not for nothing. As of 2018, Kokhanovsky was a co-owner of ESForce, the third largest venture funded by USM Holdings, a Russian oligarch close to Putin, Alisher Usmanov, who invested $100 million in Kokhanovsky’s project in 2015. In 2018, ESFORce was bought by the Russian company Mail.ru Group. Anton Cherepennikov, the founder of the Citadel system, which helps Russian special services track Internet users and tap phones, acted as Kokhanovsky’s partner in ESForce.
That is, connections with Russian business for Oleksandr Kokhanovsky, as well as for Crippa, are not at all strange. Perhaps that is why the title sponsor of NAVI in 2020 was the scandalous Russian bookmaker 1xBet.
The partnership between Kokhanovsky and Crippa is seen to be closer and was not limited to one agreement regarding NAVI. Back in 2020, at a high-profile auction for UAH 1 billion 111 million, they purchased the building of the Dnipro hotel in the very center of Kyiv on Khreshchatyk Street. The winner of the auction was "Smartland" LLC, registered in Brovary at 130 Kyivska Street — in the building, according to the YouControl system, owned by Maksym Krippi. Oleksandr Kokhanovsky spoke publicly about this purchase, who immediately declared : "The victory in the auction for the Dnipro hotel was not won by Russian oligarchs, but by Ukrainian ITishniks."
However, at that time People’s Deputy Andrii Kholodov issued a statement contradicting Kokhanovsky’s words, in which he indicated that the purchase of the Dnipro hotel may have something to do with... the same old partner of Krippa, the Russian billionaire Oleg Boyko.
"The auction for the sale of the Dnipro Hotel was probably won by Russian gaming tycoon Oleg Boyko (Ritzio Entertainment group: Patriot lottery, Vulk@n casino, Metro - Jackpot slot machines, Khreshchatyk business center, ALBI group)," he wrote in his Facebook.
In support of this, he provided archival data of the tax office, according to which the director and co-owner of Smartland LLC, which bought the hotel, Maksym Mykolayovych Tereshchuk, was an employee of Chesna Gra, MDK, and Proryv gambling LLCs, which were part of the aforementioned by Oleg Boyk of the Russian Ritzio holding.
It was far from surprising to hear Boyka’s name in Crippa’s agreement with Kokhanovsky. It is obvious that the amount of UAH 1.1 billion for the purchase of a hotel in the center of Kyiv for a Ukrainian company with a charter capital of UAH 11 million seems overwhelming. What can you say about the Russian gaming tycoon with a capital, according to various estimates, from 1.1 to 1.5 billion dollars.
However, another well-known name of the head of the tax committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Danylo Hetmantsev, who was accused by journalist Serhiy Ivanov of working for the FSB of the Russian Federation, also surfaced in this story . In several companies in which Maksym Crippa is the owner, namely "Profit Tem" LLC and "Midal" LLC, the director is Oleksandr Vasyliovych Osoka (he is also a co-founder of Crippa’s charity fund "MK Foundation" Osoka), whose personal phone number is 09763... 35 in GetContact is associated with the tags "Alexander from Hetmantsev", "Sasha State Property Fund" and "Dnipro Hotel Lawyer".
Danylo Hetmantsev used to be involved and, it is possible, that he continues to be involved in the gambling business. At one time, he was a shareholder of the MSL lottery, but Hetmantsev’s connection with this lottery can be traced even today: Olena Polosenko, today’s co-owner of MSL, is also a co-owner of Hetmantsev’s Jurimex law firm. In general, the mass media previously linked the founders of this lottery with the "Alfa Group" of the under-sanctioned Russian oligarch Mykhailo Fridman.
Hetmantsev personally covered the fact of the purchase of the Dnipro hotel in his social networks. Probably, the chairman of the tax committee, the former assistant of the exposed FSB agent Volodymyr Sivkovich, Danylo Hetmantsev, through Oleksandr Osoka, contributed to the acquisition of the Dnipro hotel for the benefit of Kokhanovsky and Krippa.
Why does Maxim Krippi and a Russian oligarch need a hotel in the center of the Ukrainian capital? Explaining the purpose of the agreement, Oleksandr Kohanovskyi said that in a year or two, he and his partners will create the world’s first e-sports hotel with an arena for holding championships on the basis of the Dnipro hotel. The plans may have been hindered by the war, but already six months after the purchase of Dnipro Hotel PrJSC, it applied for registration of TM Dnipro Casino, indicating the indexes of casino and night club services, but not e-sports. And in 2021, Krippa and Kokhanovsky submitted an application to the Gambling and Lottery Regulation Commission to open a casino and a slot machine hall at the Dnipro hotel, but at that time they were refused. In any case, plans have clearly changed.
However, Maksym Krippa’s interest in e-sports can be traced back a long time, as he entered this market much earlier than when he bought the Dnipro hotel and NAVI e-sports company. Maksym Crippa is also the owner of the e-sports bookmaker GGBet, which in recent years has been positioned as the general sponsor of the NAVI club bought by Crippa and which on August 23, 2023 received a KRAIL license to work in Ukraine.
This is despite the fact that GGBet is a Russian project that was originally conceived as a bookmaker division of the Vulk@n casino. Back in 2011, LLC "Bet.ru" was registered in Moscow , which managed the bookmaker site ggbet.ru in Russia. Later, the bookmaker began to position itself internationally and registered also in Malta (site https://ggbet.com) and Cyprus (site https://gg.bet).
The trademark GGBet belongs to the Cypriot company Brivio Ltd, which, in addition to managing the site https://gg.bet, also manages the site of the casino "Vulk@n Vegas" (https://vulkanvegas.com) under the trademark "Vulk@n" , which, as mentioned above, belongs to the Russian billionaire Oleg Boyko.
The director of Brivio Ltd is Fedor Fedoriv, who is also the director of the Cypriot company One World Secretarial, which acts as the secretary of another Cypriot company Bevita Holding Limited, the founder of the Russian LLC "Bet.ru". It is noteworthy that in March 2023, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, implemented the decision of the NSDC to impose sanctions on both Bet.ru LLC and Cypriot Bevita Holding Limited and its director Ivanna Kinga Kovalska as operators of the Russian bookmaker GGBet.
From the decision of the National Security Council on the imposition of sanctions dated March 10, 2023
A few months later, the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries issued GGBet a license to work in Ukraine through GGBet LLC and GGBet Holding LLC, which were created in February 2023. One hand hits, the other strokes?
Where in this Cypriot-Russian system of companies is bookmaker Maxim Krippa? Despite the fact that he tries to hide his name, the registers still remember and leave traces. Fedir Fedoriv, the director of Brivio Ltd, is the beneficiary of the Ukrainian LLC "Novolodzhik", whose director from 2010 to 2015, according to the YouControl system, was Maxim Krippa.
In addition, One World Secretarial, where Fedir Fedorov is the director, acts as the secretary for the company Natus Vincere Esport CY (which, by the way, has the same registered address in Cyprus as Brivio Ltd), where the director is Evgeny Zolotaryov, the director of the NAVI club, whose owner since 2022 was Maxim Krippa. Yes, it sounds a bit confusing, but in the diagram below, all connections will be clearly visible.
The scheme of connections of Maxim Krippa, Vulk@n casino and GGBET with the Russian gaming business
However, this is not the entire ecosystem of Crippa’s eSports business to date. In addition to the GGBet bookmaker and the NAVI club, Krippa created the eSports studio Maincast, which, according to its nominal co-founder Vitaliy Volochai, has 90-95% of the rights to cover all eSports tournaments in the Ukrainian language. In 2020, Maincast bought the rights to broadcast ESL tournaments, one of the world’s largest organizers of eSports tournaments, for which it pays $2.5 million per year. In essence, Maincast is a platform for attracting viewers to bets on GGBet. NAVI teams play, Maincast broadcasts it, and GGBet brings income to Maxim Crippi.
In the case of Maincast, Maksym Krippa did not hide anymore and spoke personally as the founder of the Ukrainian LLC "Maincast". The second founder of the company is the Cypriot company MainCast Limited, and the secretary is the same One World Secretarial, which also acts as the secretary of the Cypriot companies of the NAVI club and Bet.ru LLC, the Russian manager of the GGBet bookmaker.
In essence, One World Secretarial and its director Fedor Fedorov became the link in the entire chain of Crippa’s companies, which closes the entire ecosystem of his gambling business - casino "Vulk@n", bookmaker GGBet, e-sports club NAVI and broadcasting studio MainCast. However, there is another clue that connects the above-mentioned developer of casino games with these companies - the company EvoPlay. Trademarks EvoPlay, GGBet and MainCast are registered in Ukraine through the same representative, Sandra Santos Rodriguez.
Why haven’t we heard anything about Maxim Crippa before?
Because his entire business was illegal. And when you make money illegally, "shining" is dangerous. The "Vulk@nu" and GGBet sites have been operating illegally in Ukraine and Russia for the past few years. For example, on the website of the "European Truth" publication, the advertisement of the "Vulk@n" casino was published as early as 2015, when there were still five years before the legalization of gambling in Ukraine.
Moreover, the bookmaker GGBet has successfully made and continues to make money from Ukrainian players on a number of its sites not licensed in Ukraine. The licensed site ggbet.ua is currently under development and is not functioning. That is, despite obtaining a license, Maksym Krippa today, as in all recent years, earns money from illegal gambling without paying taxes to the budget of Ukraine.
In any case, now that the "blind" Gambling and Lotteries Regulatory Commission, which at one time did not see the Russian origin of the bookmaker 1xBet, and today does not see the same with "Vulk@nom" and GGBet, issued licenses to Crippa’s gaming projects , then with the billions earned up to that point in the illegal gambling business, it is already possible to enter the public sphere, buying up companies, mass media, and real estate. What Maxim Krippa began to do, not particularly hiding.
In February 2023, Max Crippa bought the hotel and restaurant complex "Knyazhy Dvor" in Knyazhychy near Kyiv from the National Bank of Ukraine for UAH 33 million, a place for bankers to relax and hold financial events. The sole participant of the auction and, accordingly, its winner was "Midal" LLC , 99.99% of which is owned by Maxim Volodymyrovych Krippa.
For 33 million 111 thousand UAH, he became the owner of a complex with an area of almost 1.4 hectares with premises with a total area of 3787 square meters: this is a hotel, a physical culture and wellness complex, a banquet hall, three conference halls, 16 gazebos, 2 swimming pools and an artificial lake. According to the assessment of the publication "Glavkom", which was bought by Crippa through Tatiana Snopko, the price of 827 thousand dollars for such property is much lower than the market price.
A month earlier, in January 2023, the same "Midal" LLC of Maxim Krippa purchased an elite estate in the villages of Kozyn and Koncha-Zaspa near Kyiv from the previously nationalized "Prominvestbank" for UAH 311 million. It includes several residential buildings, a boathouse, a restaurant with 140 seats, an administrative building, a sleeping building, a residential building with an area of 1128 square meters and several plots of land.
Ownership structure and property rights of Maxim Krippa
Active buying of business and real estate by Crippa at that time took place not only in Ukraine, but also in the Czech Republic. Moreover, the remarkable coincidence is precisely when Tatyana Snopko moved to this country after the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. So, according to the data of the Czech registers, in April 2022, Maxim Crippa acquired the Czech company "Arponi Solution", which he renamed "GSC Game World Czech" (GSC Game World is the developer of the famous computer game STALKER) and from April 7 of this year became its official final beneficiary.
On April 14, 2022, a division of the NAVI eSports club appears in the Czech Republic: Maksym Krippa (not yet officially owning NAVI) bought the Czech company Venroha Project and renamed it Natus Vincere CZ.
However, Crippa’s most notable deal in the Czech Republic was the purchase of a villa in the elite Prague district of Troja at K Bohnicím 776/1A 171 00 Praha-Troja from Russian businessman Migridat Pirnazar, former chairman of the board of directors of the St. Petersburg enterprise Nevsky Zavod Elektroshchit. As the Czech publication CT24 writes , "the Pirnazar family sold their part in the company to which the house is registered, Ukrainians Maksym Khaitulov and Maksym Krippa became the new owners." The price of the deal is not indicated, but in any case, in the midst of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the purchase of real estate and business from the Russians looks more
than telling.
A villa in Prague bought by Maxim Krippa in the summer of 2022
According to the registers, the transaction took place on July 20, 2022, when Crippa and Khaitulov became the beneficiaries of Migridat Pirnazar’s Czech trading company "RTR Co". A few months later, Tetiana Snopko returned to Ukraine and started buying Ukrainian media.
Is politics the ultimate goal?
Buying mass media in Ukraine has always been connected with the desire to secure access to power. As already mentioned above, it is difficult in principle to consider media in Ukraine as business projects, and today, during the war, it is ready to do so. But as a tool for achieving one’s business or political goals, it is more like the truth.
"The media market in Ukraine differs from other markets in that the main part of the players in it is not a business, but a tool of political influence," Vitaly Laptenok, a partner of the venture capital company Flyer One Ventures, emphasized in a Forbes comment.
Taking into account that in 2015 Maksym Krippa already tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to become a deputy of the Kyiv City Council from the "Self-Help" party, and before that he was an assistant to people’s deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of the 6th convocation from the "Batkivshchyna" party of Ruslan Lukyanchuk and Valery Babenko, the version with the intention to engage in political activity may be quite real.
The version that the mass media is an opportunity for Crippa to whiten his reputation, and on the other hand, to have platforms for promoting his projects, does not seem absurd. Which, in fact, is already happening. For example, on the delo.ua website today you can find many publications about the charitable activities of Maxim Krippa and his "MK Foundation". In addition, the publication has been paying regular attention to the e-sports club NAVI for the last year, and a complimentary interview with the head of the MainCast studio Vitaly Volochai was also published.
Taking into account the strong ties and rich history of Maxim Crippa’s and Maxim Polyakov’s relations with Russian business, it cannot be ruled out that Russian interests may also be behind the purchase of Ukrainian mass media during the war.
Asking Maxim Krippa himself about all this turned out to be a difficult task, since he, considering everything, practically does not exist in Ukraine. Some media reported that he lives in Los Angeles, but his company registrations list his address as Dubai, where he owns apartment #4803 in the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa.
Whatever the purpose of the purchase of Ukrainian mass media by Maksym Krippa and his partner Maksym Polyakov, such an active development of their gaming business empire, which is deeply permeated with Russian roots, is alarming. As well as the fact that the Ukrainian state, which has been defending itself against Russian aggression for almost two years at a huge cost, is silently watching how Russian businessmen and their Ukrainian protégés, who financed the Russian army, spread their wings in Ukraine. Although the issue of licenses by the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries to the Russian online casino "Vulk@n" and the GGBet bookmaker is difficult to call silence. Active support.
PS During the preparation of this material, it became known about another purchase of the Krippa-Polyakov tandem. In September 2023, Artem Starosek, the founder of the Molfar OSINT agency, bought the online publication AIN.UA. According to Forbes, before founding Molfar, Starosek worked at Maksym Polyakov’s Noosphere Ventures, where he inspected the fund’s investment properties. Several participants in the IT market confirmed that the publication AIN.UA de jure belongs to a former employee of Polyakov, but in fact it belongs to Polyakov himself.