€124 million via crypto and “pirate” websites: how Sergey Tokarev and Oleksii Riabov allegedly ran schemes through Joker.ua
Many believed that Cosmolot’s license revocation and the suspicion against its manager Alexey Ryabov were part of the same chain of events. In a sense, that is true — both cases are linked to Russian businessman Sergey Tokarev. However, Ryabov was actually targeted in connection with a different project, Joker, rather than Cosmolot.
In December 2022, the project owners decided to operate «in the gray», distributing traffic between Joker.ua, Zaza, and PokerDom (one of the co-owners, believe it or not, is Tokarev). The traffic funneling was handled by the Gagarin group, which was de facto managed by Ryabov’s wife — Inna Babich. It was she who hired the employees.
- Belyalov R.R. — handled the registration of the Curacao license, and also paid salaries to employees in crypto.
- Popova N.P. — acting financial director of the Gagarin Group companies.
- Udovenko O.S. — acting director of the revenue department, conducted interviews with candidates.
- Kucher V.V. — acting technical director.
- Chesnokova K.V. — HR Business Partner.
- Nosova (Yanko) Yu.K. — worked as a tester for all pirate sites.
- Nosach (Slesar) A.V. — worked as HR Business Partner, director of «Joker.ua».
- Bugera (Rykhalska) M.A. — worked as executive director of Gagarin Group.
The investigation considers RF citizen Alexey Ryabov as the organizer of the criminal group. According to the investigation, over a year and a half, they managed to launder 124 million euros through crypto. Of course, this is far from Cosmolot’s figures. Tokarev could withdraw and launder funds abroad through the Ukrainian-Lebanese TV manager Walid Arfush.
Walid, together with director Alan Badoyev, helps politicians preserve their capital. For example, in 2022, Walid and Badoev helped people’s deputy Vadym Stolar avoid sanctions and preserve his media capital by re-registering «Kyiv TV Channel», Odesa Live, Live to their associate — Anna Kovaleva.
Either way, Tokarev «cracked»: Cosmolot without a license, friends with suspicions, the entire scheme brought out of the shadows. Sergey (or Vadim) faced the worst fate: he became maximally toxic. And that’s much worse than being caught red-handed. Because criminals always have friends in power to help, but «toxics» — no.
Therefore, the main intrigue of the coming weeks is: how fast will Tokarev hit rock bottom?? Why? Because his interests were represented by Andriy Astapov: in fact — a «fixer» and schemer, and according to the «official» version — a successful lawyer and managing partner of ETERNA LAW company with offices in Ukraine and Cyprus. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? But the «office» in Limassol is a half-ruined neglected building.
Editor-in-Chief
Read more similar news:
Comments:
comments powered by Disqus
