Justice decided to probe cryptocurrency enthusiast Mykhailo Romanenko

Justice decided to probe cryptocurrency enthusiast Mykhailo Romanenko

Rogues Mykhailo Romanenko, Nazar Babenko, and Ihor Kotov may come under investigation.

The British company Eternity Business Limited, backed by Mykhailo Romanenko - the subject of several of our publications, is implicated in criminal proceedings. As Ivan Chip writes in his review of the projects CRiME and [loud cases], this interesting fact emerged in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions.

According to the ruling of the Dnipro district court of Kyiv, a number of citizens from the European Union, Canada, and the USA were affected by call centers located in the Ukrainian capital, which involved them in financial pyramids. Among the mentioned is Eternity Business. Although the company’s name in the court document is misspelled (an extra letter "n" in the first word), there is no doubt that it refers to the subject of our recent investigation.

In the investigation "Crypto Pyramids in the Shadow of the Office of the President", we specifically discussed how the "neobank" Eternity Business and its founder Mykhailo Romanenko were actively promoted at the beginning of this summer. In image publications, it was stated that Mykhailo Romanenko amassed a fortune of $1.5 billion on cryptocurrencies (which, naturally, was not substantiated) and collected an impressive collection of supercars worth $10 million (which is an obvious nonsense).

In one of the PR materials, it was mentioned that Eternity Business, along with another entity under Romanenko’s control, Danvel LTD, is part of the Danvel Group corporation. Romanenko’s partner in the corporation was named a young man from Dnipro named Nazar Babenko.

Nazar Babenko and Danvel were actively promoted from October to December last year (for example). Furthermore, like Romanenko and Eternity Business, and in the case of Danvel and Babenko, the informational campaign was built on highlighting the obscenely luxurious lifestyle of the subjects with a strong hint to the audience of the possibility of earning big money without much effort.

Ihor Kotov and Nazar Babenko

In image publications on English-language resources, Babenko’s partner and a member of the board of directors of Danvel is mentioned as Ihor Kotov.

It is known about Kotov that he is a co-founder of NGO "Leon" Sports Club. Among the co-founders of this sports club is also Mykhailo Koshlyak, a very influential businessman in Dnipropetrovsk region, and a deputy of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council from the pro-Russian OPFL. In the "wild nineties," he was part of the OCG Narik (Oleksandr Nalekreshvili, who later changed his surname to Petrovskyi). Koshlyak is personally acquainted with Andriy Smyrnov, the deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine.

In promotional materials, Eternity Business is positioned as an exclusive investment product. However, on the Eternity Business website, where this "product" is supposedly located, visitors are persistently encouraged to join the "community."

Upon joining and registering, the visitor enters a "personal cabinet," where they are immediately encouraged to "invest." Interestingly, the larger the sum they invest, the more unreal annual interest they are promised. Separate "bonuses" are promised to those who recruit new members to the "community."

Our reviewers concluded that this very much resembles a fraudulent scheme with elements of a financial pyramid. Experts from Paranoid Web Extension, who combat fraudulent threats on the internet, came to the same conclusion.

According to experts, "Eternity.business is engaged in activities with a high risk of fraud."

A few days ago, we found out that shortly after our investigation was released, on July 25, the British company Danvel Group Limited, which combines the "assets" of Romanenko, Babenko, and Kotov, changed its name to Eternity Business Globe Limited. Among its activities, "banks" appeared. However, the company remained in the form of a Private Company Limited by Shares, LTD. According to the UK’s 2006 Companies Act, this is the lowest level of responsibility. Therefore, Eternity Business Globe Limited cannot obtain a banking license.

From here, it can be assumed that "banks" in the company’s activities are indicated for misleading potential fraud victims.

It is worth noting that after our investigation was published, Eternity Business’s activity in the Ukrainian information space diminished. However, we noticed that our subjects attempted to "spin" on the territory of the European Union. In particular, a certain Rudolf Brandl (he states on FB that he currently works at Eternity Business) actively promoted a webinar to a German audience from Eternity, which allegedly could bring participants crazy money.

Leo Levin

The key speaker of the event was announced as an Israeli named Leo Levin, who is listed in the registration data of Mykhailo Romanenko’s British "offices" as a co-founder and co-director.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine has opened three criminal cases where Eternity Business is highly likely implicated. These cases involve crimes such as tax evasion, money laundering of criminally obtained funds, and participation in illegal gambling business.

Ivan Chip, specially for CRiME and [loud cases]