Kyiv millionaire Slobozhenko suspected of unpaid taxes and mobilisation evasion

Kyiv millionaire Slobozhenko suspected of unpaid taxes and mobilisation evasion

Until recently, the name of Oleksandr Slobozhenko could only be heard in programs on YouTube - as an example of an inspiring story of life success. Coming from a modest family, who at the age of 25 is a dollar millionaire, the owner of a thriving business and, perhaps, one of the most expensive vehicle fleets in Ukraine. There were some problems with the tax authorities, but who doesn’t have them?

Slobozhenko himself did not shy away from publicity, so his successes could be followed on social networks just a few weeks ago. There he published photos and videos of his foreign travels, auto racing, entertainment with friends and, of course, training camp for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

However, after UP investigators found out that Slobozhenko was removed from the military register, he sharply limited his activity on social networks. He did not comment on the facts published by journalists.

The media decided to analyze other areas of the young millionaire’s life and discovered that the story with military records was far from the last surprise associated with Slobozhenko.

Who is Oleksandr Slobozhenko and where does he get his money from?

Oleksandr Slobozhenko was born and spent his childhood and youth in the village of ielogorodka near Kyiv. From several interviews it is known that he is the only child in an ordinary family, where there were no direct connections with influential officials or businessmen who could invest money in Oleksandr or contribute to his earnings in other ways. Slobozhenko’s complimentary biography on Wikipedia states that he began earning his first money on the Internet as a teenager, promoting public pages and chats on social networks.

For the last eight years, Oleksandr Slobozhenko has been involved in traffic arbitrage mainly in the field of gambling, which they are now trying to limit in Ukraine, and betting. Arbitrageurs who work in this area, thanks to successfully configured advertising, bring potential clients to advertisers’ sites or applications and receive money for it.

Slobozhenko’s company Traffic Devils, which has been working in traffic arbitrage since 2019, has become quite successful and, judging by Slobozhenko himself, brings him a lot of profit. Very big.

Slobozhenko did not hide the fact that he liked to be in the media and visible - for this he even bought advertising from popular bloggers. Now the 25-year-old millionaire himself has almost half a million audience on Instagram and just under 30 thousand subscribers on TikTok . He often appears as a guest on popular YouTube shows - for example, Ramina Eshakzai’s video with Slobozhenko alone has received more than 1.2 million views. Not long ago, he filed an application to register the Alex Slobozhenko trademark - this is how he is recorded on Instagram and TikTok.

It was the desire to obsessively demonstrate the details of his life in public that played a cruel joke on Slobozhenko.

Judging by his social networks, Oleksandr Slobozhenko behaves like a typical parvenu - he buys dozens of luxury, mostly sports cars (Lamborghini, Ferrari, Mercedes Maybach, McLaren, Chevrolet Corvette, BMW M3 Competition and others), expensive watches, boasts of real estate and exorbitant spending on travel and gifts for friends. The total cost of the vehicle fleet, according to him , last year amounted to 3 million US dollars.

He regularly participates in street racing in sports cars, violating traffic rules, drives buggies in the protected areas of the Carpathians, flies around the world on private jets: in a word, he lives his best life.

After all, Oleksandr Slobozhenko never hid the fact that he earns a lot, tens of millions of hryvnia per month. Therefore, his expenses may well correspond to his income, and how he spends them is a matter of taste.

So what’s the problem then?

"Mom loves speed"

Surprisingly, Slobozhenko owns practically nothing - officially he only owns a 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer car and a 2019 BMW S1000RR motorcycle. At the same time, he himself claims that his personal fleet now includes more than 18 cars. Slobozhenko regularly announces the purchase of new luxury cars, although he does not register them in his name. The same situation applies to real estate.

But his 75-year-old grandmother Nina Zvir looks very successful compared to her grandson. The pensioner, who still lives in the village of Belogorodka, last year became the owner of two apartments in the luxurious Kyiv skyscraper Taryan Towers . According to her grandson, these apartments cost him 700 thousand US dollars. From his publications and stories it is clear that it will be he, and not the grandmother, who will live there.

Slobozhenko also purchased two parking spaces in this residential complex and registered them not with himself, but with his mother, 45-year-old Iryna Zvir. Another apartment in a residential complex in Pechersk in the center of Kyiv is registered in her name.

Oleksandr Slobozhenko also signed up part of his car fleet to his mother, in particular, the Mercedes Benz Maybach S580 (2022 onwards), BMW M3 (2022 onwards), Ferrari SF90 Stradale (2022 onwards) and other cars. In one of his interviews, Slobozhenko jokingly quoted deputy Oleksandr Dubinskyi, who explained the large number of elite cars of his mother with the already legendary phrase “ Mom loves speed .” Although in an interview Slobozhenko used this phrase to explain his personal passion for cars, now these words look like a direct copy.

Previously, 45-year-old Irina Zvir worked as a cosmetologist, but in the summer of 2023 she registered as a sole proprietor with the main activity of “other types of education.” A few months later, Slobozhenko registered Traffic Devils LLC with the main activity of “advertising agencies,” where his mother received the position of director. The media tried to talk to Iryna Zvir, but at first she stated that she did not know Slobozhenko at all, and on the second attempt she advised the journalist to ask questions directly to her son and hung up.

75-year-old grandmother Slobozhenko, a former labor teacher, also became an entrepreneur - a few weeks ago Nina Zvir opened a sole proprietorship with the main activity of “consulting on commercial activities and management.” It seems that she, too, may soon become part of her grandson’s arbitration empire.

According to the data, another car from Slobozhenko’s fleet belongs to 49-year-oldformer policeman from Donetsk Andriy Medyanyk. We are talking about the security vehicle of Oleksandr Slobozhenko, a Toyota Land Cruiser 200. Medyanik is also the owner of a Volkswagen Crafter minibus. We assume that Medyanik can work as Slobozhenko’s security guard. During the phone call, Medyanyk stated that he did not know Slobozhenko and was hearing about the cars for the first time.

So why doesn’t Slobozhenko register his own property as his own? One of the options is so that in case of problems with the law it does not fall under arrest.

Tax troubles

The company Traffic Devils, which Slobozhenko founded, according to him, in 2019, was in fact officially registered only in November 2023. Slobozhenko himself also did not declare his entrepreneurial activity for a long time.

Nevertheless, at some point the young millionaire became interested in the tax authorities. In June 2020, the National Police opened the first criminal proceedings under articles of tax evasion and “legalization of property obtained by crime.” Tax officials calculated that Slobozhenko owed the state budget almost 54.8 million UAH.

As part of the investigation into this case, the police conducted searches at Slobozhenko’s house and in his office in the center of Kiev, where they seized equipment and documents. However, what was confiscated was later returned to him.

By the way, while the investigation into this case was ongoing, Slobozhenko applied to register the Traffic Devils trademark , which was approved two years later. However, he was still in no hurry to legally register the company.

Judging by the court decisions published in the state register, the case of tax evasion froze at the stage of pre-trial investigation in 2022. Slobozhenko himself now calls this case “fabricated.”

It is noteworthy that just a few weeks after the opening of that case, he registered as a sole proprietor of the 3rd group - this is possible provided that the entrepreneur’s annual income does not exceed 1,167 times the minimum wage (UAH 8.3 million). However, according to Slobozhenko himself, he earns more than a million dollars monthly. And the lifestyle that he publicly demonstrated until recently clearly demonstrates that his annual income is significantly higher than UAH 8.3 million. He probably spends only part of his money through individual entrepreneurs.

Therefore, in 2023, law enforcement officers again paid attention to Slobozhenko. This time, criminal proceedings were opened by the Bureau of Economic Security on suspicion of tax evasion (Article 212 of the Criminal Code), organizing gambling (Article 203−2 of the Criminal Code) and laundering proceeds from crime on an especially large scale (Article 209 of the Criminal Code). Last November, Slobozhenko said that he planned to pay accrued taxes to the state budget, and rejected accusations of organizing gambling. The media did not find confirmation of the payment of these taxes.

In November 2023, Slobozhenko finally registered Traffic Devils LLC and together with it created another company - Traffic Devils Agency, where his friend, 31-year-old Roman Dzyubenko, became a co-founder. At the end of 2023, both companies declared only losses - UAH 64.5 thousand and UAH 59.1 thousand, respectively.

At the same time, Traffic Devils is considered one of the largest companies in Ukraine in the field of traffic arbitrage. The company’s LinkedIn page states that it employs more than 400 people in offices in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Poland. Before the Russian invasion in 2022, Traffic Devils maintained offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is difficult to check what the status of these units is now, but last year the Russian service Partnerkin published an interview with Traffic Devils team leaders Oleh and Semen (their last names were not indicated in the interview). And the application rental site from Traffic Devils is still maintained in Russian and positions itself as “an automated service for renting applications from the largest arbitration team in the CIS.”

Oleksandr Slobozhenko still owns 13% in Ikigai Group, which is engaged in real estate leasing. The company was registered two months ago in Kyiv and is founded by entrepreneurs Yevhen Trusov, Oleksandr Horkushyn, Maksym Yakupov, Vladyslav Myroshnychenko and Vitaliy Dukhopelov, in addition to Slobozhenko.

Sports, entertainment, alcohol

Judging by his Instagram, Oleksandr Slobozhenko regularly travels abroad with friends - despite the restrictions imposed on men of military age. As colleagues from the UP recently found out, he was removed from the military register due to his unfitness for service. Simply put, due to significant health problems, he cannot be mobilized. This allows him to cross the border freely and does not oblige him to anything.

“In the videos published on the young man’s social networks, he does things that are not for the seriously ill - except for racing in expensive cars, he presses weights, jumps somersaults into a pond, rides jet skis and regular motorcycles, snowmobiles, etc.,” the journalists noted. UP.

Unfitness for service is determined by a military medical commission (MMC), and the basis for such a conclusion can be a truly very serious health condition. For example, progressive tuberculosis, AIDS, severe forms of viral hepatitis, cancer, severe mental retardation, severe psychosis, and the like. These must be diseases that progress rapidly and make normal human life impossible.

A certificate of unfitness for Slobozhenko was issued by the Golosiivsky District TsK in Kyiv back in October 2022. The conclusion was signed by the chairman of the military medical commission of the Golosiivsky district, Volodymyr Prykhodko. Early last year, he was accused of receiving bribes for deregistration from the military. Prykhodko no longer heads the district VVK and quit his main job in one of the Kyiv hospitals. He is now awaiting sentencing.

We cannot say that Slobozhenko was one of Prykhodko’s “clients”, since such details are not disclosed before the verdict is pronounced. However, Slobozhenko’s active life, where extreme entertainment and alcohol are present, gives reason to doubt his health problems.

At the same time, for the first time since the beginning of the war, Slobozhenko left Ukraine on April 9, 2022, when he was not yet declared unfit for service. In one of his Instagram posts, he claimed that he left legally, but did not specify how exactly.

The media found out that Slobozhenko then left Ukraine as a volunteer. According to Ukrtransbezpeka, it was added to the Shlyakh system by the Transcarpathian Regional Military Administration. He left through Uzhgorod in a Volkswagen Crafter minibus together with Andriy Medyanyk.

Slobozhenko returned to Ukraine only six months later, in October 2022, and at the same time he allegedly passed the Military Military Commissariat, where he was given a certificate of unfitness for military service and removed from military registration. Thus, he got the opportunity to travel outside of Ukraine at any time without any restrictions, which he regularly uses.

According to the data, the last time Slobozhenko traveled abroad was on March 28 of this year and has not yet returned to Ukraine.

Oleksandr Slobozhenko ignored repeated attempts by the media to get his comments.

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