The war with the gambling mafia: the authorities strike at Shevtsova’s empire
The war with the gambling mafia: the authorities strike at Shevtsova’s empire
Alena Degrik-Shevtsova may lose her multi-million dollar business.
Last week, the gambling mafia received, perhaps, the most sensitive blow, writes in his review for [громких дел] chief editor of the CRiME project Andrey Karpinsky. On March 7, the National Bank of Ukraine revoked the banking license from iBox Bank (iBox Bank), and also decided to liquidate this financial institution. According to the press service of the NBU, Ibox was deprived of its license due to the systematic violation of the requirements of the legislation in the field of combating money laundering.
The very next day, the Bureau of Economic Security and the SBU reported on the disclosure of a large-scale fraudulent scheme at Ibox Bank. As Economic Truth wrote, Bureau detectives exposed a criminal scheme involving bank officials, more than 20 business entities controlled by it, and gambling business operators.
“The banking institution probably facilitated the gaming business in tax evasion on a particularly large scale. The predetermined amount of unpaid taxes by enterprises is UAH 400 million,” VEB said in a statement.
The tax evasion scheme was set up through controlled unlicensed mirror web resources of online casinos and betting – they were configured to accept payments using “miscoding” and broken money transfers.
To replenish accounts created on unlicensed gambling and betting sites on the Internet, cash was deposited through the IBOX self-service terminal network.
In the future, funds were credited to the settlement accounts of gambling business operators, even in cases where the turnover limit was exceeded. These legal entities are on the simplified taxation system and are not registered as VAT payers.
The investigation found that the amount of funds transferred through the bank amounted to about UAH 20 billion, of which approximately UAH 400 million in taxes were not paid.
The SBU added that they documented numerous facts of making payments from cards of Russian banks. This happened already after the start of the NWO of Russia, bypassing the corresponding ban of the National Bank.
And already on Friday, March 10, the President of Ukraine introduced the NSDC sanctions against a whole cohort of individuals and legal entities closely tied to the shadow gambling business. Among them are the key links in the schemes played out in Ibox Bank. We are talking about Leo Financial Company LLC with Kyiv registration and the Cypriot offshore company Leo Partners. From now on, their assets and activities on the territory of Ukraine are blocked for five years.
The ultimate beneficiary of both “offices”, according to open data, is Alena Shevtsova (nee Degrik) – chairman of the supervisory board of Ibox Bank. However, already former – on February 27, on the eve of the transition of the investigation around the bank to the public plane, Shevtsova resigned as chairman, citing excessive employment.
Evgeny Shevtsov and Alena Degrik-Shevtsova
Back in 2013, Alena Degrik-Shevtsova, the wife of a now former high-ranking police officer, founded the financial company Leogamig Pay. Initially, Alena Vladimirovna’s business was not a full-fledged payment system. It was more of a gateway between players and gaming platforms. But the enterprise grew at an accelerated pace, and already in 2017 Shevtsova registered the Leo domestic payment system with the National Bank, which became international after a couple of years.
Alas, during her rise, Degrik-Shevtsova was overgrown not only with assets, but also with criminal cases. The Internet publication MIND.UA, referring to the data of the Ministry of Justice, wrote that from 2016 to 2020 Alena Shevtsova and her husband Yevgeny Shevtsov, as well as their business partners Viktor Kapustin and Vadim Gordievsky, “in total managed at least ten companies, many of which became defendants in criminal proceedings under the articles “Fraud”, “Laundering of proceeds from crime” and “Fictitious business”.
Criminal cases involving the companies of Yevgeny Shevtsov, Alena Degrik Shevtsova, Viktor Kapustin, Vadim Gordievsky and their companies
| №KP | Articles of the Criminal Code under which it is being investigated | Persons involved in the case | jurisdiction | State* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 32013110000000298 | Art. 369 | Evgeny Shevtsov, Alena Degrik | SFS of the city of Kyiv | investigate |
| 32017100000000066 | Part 2 Art. 205, part 4 of Art. 190, part 1, part 3, art. 212 | OOO FC Avistar | State Fiscal Service of Kyiv | unknown |
| 42017000000002925 | Part 3 Art. 209, part 2 of Art. 205 | Leo Partners LLC, Leogaming LLC, FC Leogaming Pay LLC, FC Business Retail Group LLC | SBU | completed |
| 42018101060000202 | Part 4 Art. 190, part 1 of Art. 361 | LLC “Financial Company “Alta Capital” | GSU NPU | under investigation |
| 42019000000000526 | 171, 182, 368-2, 255, 364, and 387 | Evgeny Shevtsov | GLANDERS | closed |
| 62020000000000260 | Part 3 Art. 265 | Evgeny Shevtsov | DBR | under investigation |
| 42017000000001932 | Part 2 Art. 361, part 2 of Art. 361-1, part 2 of Art. 200, part 5 of Art. 185, part 3 of Art. 190, part 4 of Art. 190, part 1 of Art. 203-2, part 3 of Art. 209, part 2 of Art. 364, part 2 of Art. 212, part 3 of Art. 212, part 2 of Art. 205, part 1 of Art. 209-1 | LLC “Terra Premium Group” (the founder of the company is Evgeny Shevtsov) | DBR | under investigation |
*according to law enforcement agencies and extracts from the Unified State Register of Court Cases
Ibox Bank, according to the National Bank, appeared 29 years ago – in 1993. At that time, it had the somewhat ominous name “Authority” (in the 1990s, this word was more often associated with the word “criminal” than, for example, “moral”). Only in 2002, the owners renamed it Agrokombank. It became ibox bank 14 years later, in 2016, after Evgeny Berezovsky, a financier with a “muddy” reputation, joined the shareholders. With him, he “brought” a network of payment terminals “iBox”, which gave the “office” a new name.
However, having changed its name and acquired payment terminals, the bank could not improve its business and was rapidly moving towards bankruptcy and liquidation. But at the end of 2019, Alena Shevtsova appeared on the horizon. Alena Vladimirovna needed a controlled bank to serve her financial flows, and the main owners of the bank needed access to these very flows. And already in 2020, she became a shareholder of Ibox Bank (at the moment, Alena Shevtsova concentrated a little less than 25% of its shares; on the eve of the SVO, she also became the head of its supervisory board), and key positions in it were occupied by people from Leo controlled by her .
Since then, according to image publications, ibox’s business has skyrocketed. At the same time, the regulator began to accumulate questions to the bank regarding its participation in money laundering. In the fall of the year before last, the National Bank of Ukraine slapped iBox Bank with a fine of UAH 10 million for violating financial monitoring and the law on combating the legalization of proceeds from crime (the financial institution allegedly did not properly verify new and existing clients). Note that this is the largest fine provided for such a violation. Already in June of the following year, the National Bank had similar claims against Ibox again.
It is important to note that since 2021, the structures associated with Shevtsova began to officially declare their participation in the gambling business. In particular, in May 2021, LeoGaming bought a license to set up a casino and/or betting shop in the Alice Place Odessa hotel. A few months later, iBox Bank received a license from the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries of Ukraine (CRAIL) to accept payments in favor of online casinos. Already this year, ibox received a license to “operate in the gambling business.”
That is, Shevtsova is building a whole gambling empire with a controlled bank in the center. But the habit of throwing money at the state played a bad joke on her. Will Alena Shevtsova be able to get out again? Quite possible. Indeed, the presidential decree on sanctions does not mention all the companies associated with it, involved in gambling “schematosis”. And Alena Vladimirovna herself is not personally there.