Techiia owner Oleh Krot: do trails through 1xBet lead to Russian special services?

Last year’s scandal involving the unclear activities of Techiia holding owner Oleh Krot flared up and then died down, buried under a pile of new, equally intriguing scandals.

However, the issue was not resolved – the accusations against Oleh Krot of ties with Russia have not been refuted by anyone. Briefly, we remind the essence of the scandal – last year, Forbes, in the article "Quiet Flow. The founders of the IT holding Techiia claim to have spent over 2 billion UAH on the army. Is it possible?" questioned how Oleh Krot could have spent an amount on helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine that exceeds his holding’s income by several times and is almost equal to the turnover of the companies within the holding?

No answer to this question was found, and in his extensive response to the question posed, Oleh Krot could not clearly explain the origin of the money. Moreover – it was not even possible to obtain information about where this money was spent. Allegedly, this information was "forbidden to be provided by the SSU."

Perhaps, but other funds, such as the "Return Alive" fund, the Prytula fund, the Poroshenko fund, not to mention other smaller funds, do not hide this information. And apart from regular PR (in this case, PR is not a negative phenomenon – advertising attracts both new sponsors and provides an understanding of where the money went), they report on their activities.

In the case of Oleh Krot, PR was also present, skillfully supported by recognizable figures.

But, with all due respect to these individuals, they are not experts in either the financial sphere or the charity sector. And a more or less sensible report was not provided. And remember, the conversation was about a huge amount by Ukrainian standards – over 60 million dollars.

Instead, there were denials from Krot, allegations of an information attack against Techiia, and threats to go to court against the "slanderers." Which, however, was also logical. For the sake of objectivity, it should be mentioned that so far nothing has been heard about the legal proceedings, but news about the next assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine continues to regularly appear online:

All this is good, but the question posed by Forbes – where did the money come from and where was it spent? - This did not remove at all.

Nor did it remove another, which surfaced as a result of the scandal – about the connections of Oleh Krot and another co-owner of Techiia, Yuriy Lazebnikov, with the Russian bookmaker 1xBet. Which, in March of last year, when Russian tanks were wrapping Kyiv residents’ intestines around caterpillars, received a license from Ukraine to operate in our country. This license was eventually revoked after a wild scandal, but it did not remove the questions to Oleh Krot.

And here we return to the connections of the founders and owners of the IT holding Techiia with the Russians and representatives of the Ukrainian authorities, who in turn are closely intertwined with the Russian special services. Of course, we want to believe that all this is a coincidence (at least, this is what Oleh Krot claims), but it is hard to believe it.

So, as a result of journalistic investigation – if the SSU or other state bodies led such, then nothing is known about it – it turned out the following. After the scandal with the Russian bookmaker 1xBet license arose, the first deputy head of the KRAIL (Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries) Borys Baum was made extreme. He was dismissed from his position.

It should be understood that he is by no means an innocent lamb – it is Baum who is the gray cardinal of the gambling market in our country and is most closely connected with the Russians. Thus, the word "extreme" in this case means only that he got into the public sphere. In the non-public chain, it continued further.

And it led to the same Russia. Next in it was a certain Serhiy Tsybin, who was listed as the director of LLC "Your Betting Company" (YBC), which received two licenses to operate in Ukraine under the 1xBet brand. He is a former banker. What kind of banker Tsybin was is unknown, but in YBC he is obviously a "dummy" – Serhiy Tsybin has a trail of unpaid consumer loans and debts on regular credit cards.

At the same time, YBC has a statutory fund of 30 million UAH, and for two licenses, it paid 142 million UAH:

On Tsybin, a whole series of firms are registered, but we are interested in LLC "Me-Estate".

Because in 2018, according to the registers, the beneficiary and manager of LLC "Me-Estate" changed – instead of Serhiy Tsybin, it became Yuriy Lazebnikov. Who is the co-founder and managing partner of the holding Techiia. And the companion in this holding of Oleh Krot.

In 2021, both of them officially announced cooperation with 1xBet, the development of a joint project, and emphasized that they are partners of 1xBet in Ukraine. Currently, these statements are not denied because it would be absurd to deny the obvious, but both Oleh Krot and Yuriy Lazebnikov avoid questions in this regard.

But let’s return to the chain further. In Techiia, the chief lawyer is Roman Rodin. His brother Oleksandr Rodin, until February 17, 2023, was the director of LLC "Your Betting Company":

As a reminder, LLC "Your Betting Company" received two licenses last March to operate in Ukraine under the 1xBet brand. This licensing was accompanied by the law firm "Tarasyuk and Partners."

As InformNapalm found out, this office is registered at the same address as the law firm "Priker", owned by Artem Shylo. The latter, at the time of obtaining the YBC licenses, was the head of the main department of counterintelligence protection of critical infrastructure and counter-financing of terrorism as part of the SSU. He heads it now.

Returning to the Techiia holding, it was found that it includes LLC "Dinaline Construction", co-owners of which were Oleh Krot and Serhiy Titov.

The latter is a godfather of Artem Shylo. Who, after all this surfaced, stated that he doesn’t communicate with Titov and, in general, "doesn’t remember who baptized his child." Maybe. But there are too many coincidences.

Among such is Krot’s statement that Titov received a part of the company for "dealing with the bureaucratic side and land registration." Could be. But at the same time, it turned out that Titov was a co-owner in two more companies. And his partner was the wife of the head, Artem Shylo, Oleksandr Klimchuk. Now their "owner" is Oleksandr Skuratov. He also "moonlights" as a driver for Artem Shylo:

And Yevhen Lyashchenko, who became the "owner" of Dinaline Construction instead of Titov, recently became a member of the board of Ukrzaliznytsia.

This is to say that we did not wait for an investigation into Oleh Krot’s connections with Russian special services. Just as we did not wait for an investigation concerning Borys Baum and other people involved in issuing licenses for the gaming business to the Russians.

Who Borys Baum is and about his connections with Russian organized crime and the vice-speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Aleksandr Babakov, also needs no explanation. For those who don’t know, we send them to “Myrotvorets”.

And here again, Tsybin’s name emerges: "Borys Baum helped establish contact between Semiokhin, Karshkov, and Mykhaylo Spektor, and now the latter is responsible for the success of 1XBet in Ukraine and promotes the interests of the Russian founders of the project. For work, Spektor received Serhiy Tsybin as a nominal owner and manager for the legal entity LLC ’Your Betting Company’, which was to obtain a license under 1XBet. The licensing process was overseen by lawyer Serhiy Tarasyuk. In KRAIL, Spektor had Baum’s support. And at the beginning of the year, this might have been enough. But the documents for one license application were only ready in February, and for the second in March 2022. So the plans were adjusted by the war."

As you can see, there are other names in the Myrotvorets investigation mentioned in our investigation. Alongside the names of representatives of the Russian organized crime group "Luzhnikovskaya", the brightest representative of which is Mykhaylo Spektor.

And - 1xBet, which was so promoted by the co-owner of the now "actively helping the army" holding Techiia, Oleh Krot. Now he avoids the topic of cooperation with the Russian bookmaker, but in the same Forbes investigation regarding the unclear origin of the money, "transferred to the Ukrainian Armed Forces," Oleh Krot could not clearly explain the holding’s income that would allow him to make super-high donations to the army, pointing only out that half of the 2021 revenue was brought by one of his businesses – the esports corporate group WePlay Holding.

Both in 2021 and after the start of the full-scale war, the esports company WePlay Esports continued to cooperate with the Russian bookmaker 1xBet. Journalists discovered that 1xBet works with WePlay Esports’ esports events, particularly with online seasons of Counter Strike: Go tournaments. On the 1xBet websites, Ukrainian WePlay Esports events are regularly announced, on which the bookmaker offers to place bets. Moreover, the Russians organized broadcasts of the 5th season of the WePlay Academy League, which took place from July 25 to August 14, 2022.

After the scandal erupted, these statements disappeared from the Russian bookmaker’s sites, which also makes one think. Clearly, getting into the scandal, Techiia tried to erase all its traces on the 1xBet sites. But how can this be done without having direct contact with the Russian bookmaker and not influencing it?

The fact that Techiia spent 60 million dollars on helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine – which is doubtful since it is not supported by anything besides Oleh Krot’s statements – also doesn’t remove all the questions listed above.

As it is worth reminding how dangerous such companies are. Here is one side of the coin, and it is best expressed by Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, the first deputy head of the VR Commission on Anti-Corruption Policy: "– The gaming market is quite specific. It is considered quite risky in terms of ‘strange money’ – that is, money that has no explanations... And now let’s just imagine a situation where an aggressor country stands behind a gaming company that needs to legally import Russian corrupt money into Ukraine. In order to have operational funds here to buy agents, pointers, banal bribes to officials so that they look or don’t look somewhere they should."

But there is another side – similar companies are dangerous because they collect a lot of personal data from people who play on their sites. Where this data goes and how it is used, one can only guess. Especially if Russian special services stand behind the company. What is 60 million dollars against this background?

So, there are no documents with stamps and seals from the GRU or FSB proving that the Techiia owners Oleh Krot and Yuriy Lazebnikov are their agents. But questions about all the strange coincidences listed above remain. And they lead to quite specific thoughts. Especially against the background of other scandals with unclear "esports" teams that suddenly received huge state assets by winning strange auctions.

In this, the position of another state figure who defended Oleh Krot looks quite strange. The head of the "Servant of the People" faction, David Arakhamia, in an interview with Forbes, stated: "I am familiar with Krot and know whom and for what money they helped the Armed Forces. I can confirm that several tens of millions of dollars were transferred."

Author: Olha Shmatko