War, casinos, Russian money: what does online casino Slots City and Slot King have to do with the occupying country?

War, casinos, Russian money: what does online casino Slots City and Slot King have to do with the occupying country?

Gambling addiction is a huge problem for fighters defending Ukraine from an aggressor country. To escape constant stress and exhaustion, military personnel are willing to spend tens of thousands of hryvnia, not realizing that the situation is getting out of control. Some players become so addicted to online gambling that they end up in insane amounts of debt. And a fighter with debts amounting to several zeros is an easy target for Russian recruiters. In this material, read about the online casinos Slots City and Sloto King, their probable connections with the Russian Federation and the dominance of advertising, including those aimed at military personnel.

On 15 April 2024, a well-known Ukrainian activist, Sergeant of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Pavlo Petrychenko was killed in action against the Russian occupiers. Condolences for the loss were expressed by a large number of celebrities and the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In addition to defending his homeland in the last days of his life, Pavlo actively raised the problem of total gambling addiction among soldiers on the front line. The petition of the deceased soldier to ban online casino gambling for the military gained the required number of votes in a matter of days, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy instructed the President to consider the issues raised in it.

Earlier, this topic was also raised by activist and soldier Yuriy Hudymenko. "A person with debts is the most amenable tool for recruitment. And if you think that only we use this tool, you are f*cking wrong. The Russians know about it as well as we do and use it hyperactively. And our debt fighter is just a gift for them. There will be no examples, but, unfortunately, not because they don’t exist. They do exist," he said.

Civilians are also affected by the problem of gambling addiction. Especially those who found themselves on the brink of survival during the war and are trying to grab any opportunity to make money. Online casinos advertised by well-known bloggers, Telegram channels, and even some media seem to be a straw for such vulnerable people to grab.

Among those whose ads appear most intrusively in front of the eyes of people with mobile phones are Slots City and Slot King. Although these companies are not related to each other in any way, they are equally dangerous for gamblers.

Slots City and connections with Russia

The legal entity that received the Slots City online casino licence in February 2021 is GameDev LLC. As of March 2024, the founders of the company were Belfour Closed Joint Stock Company, a non-diversified venture corporate investment fund, and Israeli citizen Yaakov Finkelstein.

The company was established in December 2019 by Maxim Kovtonyuk, and a year later he was joined by Ruslan Nonka. These names are important because they are registered with a number of other companies whose names suggest a connection to the gambling business. In particular, among them: "Gambletech, Statbet, Centregame, and Gameyug. With a high degree of probability, such a large number of companies owned by the same people may indicate that they act as legal entities for other online casinos that are essentially copies of Slots City, but do not have a licence from the Gambling Regulatory Commission.

Ruslan Nonka remained among the founders of GameDev LLC until November 2023. Now the company is officially managed by Israeli Yaakov Finkelstein. The search for a person with this surname might not have yielded any results if it had not been for his sister, Bella Finkelstein, with whom he and another business partner own a vodka factory in Nemyriv, Vinnytsia region, known worldwide as the Nemiroff brand.

Until recently, Yakiv Finkelstein went by the surname Hrybov and was a long-time member of the Forbes 100 richest people in Ukraine. In pre-war 2021, Yakov Gribov was ranked 83rd in the ranking with a net worth of $140 million.

Until about 2010, Nemiroff was one of the most promoted brands in Ukraine. For example, the brand’s vodka was featured in Ledy Gaga’s "Bad Romance" music video, the company was one of the main sponsors of title boxing fights and almost all arm-wrestling championships were branded with Nemiroff symbols.

The company had factories in several countries, including Russia and Belarus. But it was Russia that caused the company to start crumbling. The original founders of Nemiroff were Yakiv Hrybov, Anatoly Kipish and Alexander Glus. In 2010, Gribov and Kipish almost reached an agreement with Rustam Tariko, a Russian businessman and owner of Russian Standard, to sell the company, but Oleksandr Glus was against the deal. The Russians were ready to pay $350 million for Nemiroff.

In 2013, Yakiv Hrybov openly called the Nemiroff brand “not Ukrainian”: “ We managed to localize the distribution site of these unauthorized products. Now this is one state - Ukraine. They cannot sell their products in other countries, because in other countries there are laws according to which Nemiroff is sold only through the legal owner of the trademark rights, Nemiroff Vodka Rus and NIPE. Our next step is to explain to suppliers and consumers, that is, distributors and retail chains, that selling Vinnitsa products is dangerous .”

In an interview with the Russian Forbes in the same year, he quite clearly spoke out for the fact that he sees Ukraine and Russia as fraternal peoples: “ I was and remain a supporter of close trade, economic and cultural ties between Russia and Ukraine. For Nemiroff, the benefits of the Customs Union are obvious. In my opinion, what is being clarified today on the Maidan is not the Russia-Ukraine-EU relationship, but the claims against the current government that have accumulated among a fairly large part of the population, and the energy of this discontent is precisely directed against friendly and mutually beneficial relations between Russia and Ukraine .”

Throughout the years of the conflict between Yakiv Hrybov and Oleksandr Glus, Nemiroff vodka was produced in Russian factories, first in Bashkiria and later in the Penza region. In fact, it is still produced in the latter location today, despite the 10-year war that Russia has waged against Ukraine.

It was only in 2023 that the Ukrainian producer Nemiroff began to demand that the Russian company United Penza Vodka Distilleries (UDVZ) stop using the brand. As of now, the court proceedings are still ongoing, with the last hearing taking place in March 2024. According to the Russian register, the case is being considered in a closed session, so it is not yet possible to find out the details.

Last month, the Russian media reported that a Russian company was considering producing alcoholic beverages under the Demiroff brand in order not to be associated with the Ukrainian one and thus resolve the conflict. At the same time, experts do not rule out that Gribov, now called Finkelstein, and the Russians may have reached an agreement on this matter. "Renaming to Demiroff may be the result of an agreement between the parties.... In this case, a settlement agreement must be concluded and approved by the court," says Russian lawyer Serhiy Zuykov.

Nevertheless, while the courts are still ongoing and Russia has been waging a full-scale war against Ukraine for three years, Nemiroff vodka can be easily bought in the shops of the occupying country. Here are some examples.

Why was the face of Yakiv Finkelstein described in such detail? So that the reader understands that his intentions to be friends with Russia did not leave his mind even in the third year of a full-scale invasion. Therefore, the fact that he now owns the Ukrainian online casino Slots City, although it is not his core business, this business plays perfectly into the hands of the Russians, who only see how to ruin Ukraine.

Slot King and loyalty to Russians

The story with the Ukrainian online casino Sloto King is a little different. It has no direct connection with the occupying country. However, you can find information online that Russians can still play on this platform and even withdraw money in rubles.

The legal entity that obtained a gambling licence for Slot King is Slots.com LLC. Its sole founder since September 2020 is Pavlo Zhurylo. He also manages another company - Option Time LLC, where his partner is Liliya Vakulchyk. The woman owns the most elite real estate in Kyiv, including an apartment and two garages in Novopecherski Lypky, two garages in the newly fashionable French Quarter residential complex, and two premises in another section of the same complex. The property in these complexes is among the most expensive not only in Kyiv but in Ukraine as a whole, and it is here that the so-called Ukrainian elite live.

We also managed to find out from specialised gambling websites that Slot King is "operated by Netgame Entertainment NV and is aimed mainly at players from Ukraine and Russia". The latter company is registered on the Curacao Islands, which are controlled by the Netherlands. The registers show that NetGame Entertainment N.V. was founded in 2012. This is an important point, because in 2012, gambling was still prohibited in Ukraine.

In the latest reviews of Sloto King you can find out quite interesting information. One of them says that the casino has been operating since 2011, the other - since 2014. It is difficult to say for sure why the years of creation differ. But this is not important, since in both the first and second cases this work was illegal in Ukraine.

The Russian resource Casino.ru offers us even more information, where it is reported that the online casino Sloto King is designed for Russian-speaking users and positions itself as the first Ukrainian casino in the hryvnia. Rubles and dollars are also available for account management.”

Therefore, even if the Ukrainian founders of the online casino Sloto King do not have a direct connection to Russia, they definitely must explain how they could work in the field of online games during a period prohibited by law and why they allow the use of their platform for withdrawal of funds in Russian rubles .

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When Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared the idea of legalizing the gambling business in Ukraine, including online casinos, a very good idea was pursued - filling the budget. According to the calculations of the Slidstvo.info project, this business actually showed good income in 2023 - UAH 53 billion. But these amounts differ several times from how much Ukrainians spend on online and physical gambling. On an annual basis, this is UAH 144-180 billion, which is more than twice the volumes declared by official players in this area. If we remember that part of these funds are taken out of the pockets of Ukrainian military personnel, then this is a complete disaster.

Author: Olena Dobrodiy