Gambling with consequences: the dark side of Maksym Krippa’s media and property investments
16.10.2024 12:10
Ukrainian businessman Maksym Krippa is actively buying up property in Ukraine and abroad, media assets and hiding information about his connections with Russian businessmen. First of all, it became known that the man bought a villa from a Russian oligarch located in the Czech Republic.
This was reported by the investigative project blackboxosint.com .
Maksym Krippa’s entire business was illegal. And when you make money illegally, it’s dangerous to "be seen". The Vulkan and GGBet websites have been operating illegally in Ukraine and Russia for the past few years. For example, the European Pravda website published an advertisement for the Vulkan casino back in 2015, when gambling was still five years away from being legalized in Ukraine.
Bookmaker GGBet has successfully earned and continues to earn on Ukrainian players on a number of its unlicensed sites in Ukraine. The licensed site ggbet.ua is still under development and does not work. Despite receiving a license, Maksym Krippa today, as in recent years, earns on illegal gambling, without paying taxes to the budget of Ukraine.
In any case, now that the "blind" Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries, which at one time did not see the Russian origin of the bookmaker 1xBet, and today does not see the same with "Vulkan" and GGBet, has issued licenses to Krippa’s gaming projects, then with the billions earned before this on the illegal gambling business it is already possible to enter the public sphere, buying up companies, media and real estate. Which Maksym Krippa began to do, no longer particularly hiding.
In February 2023, Max Krippa bought the Knyazhyi Dvir hotel and restaurant complex in Knyazhychy, a place for bankers to relax and host financial events, from the NBU for over UAH 1.1 billion. The only participant in the auction and, accordingly, its winner was Midal LLC , 99.99% owned by Max Krippa.
For 33.11 million hryvnias, he became the owner of a complex with an area of almost 1.4 hectares and premises with a total area of 3.78 thousand square meters: a hotel, a sports and fitness center, a banquet hall, three conference halls, 16 gazebos, 2 swimming pools and an artificial lake. According to the Glavkom publication, the price of the property of 827 thousand dollars, purchased by Krippa through Tetyana Snopko, is much lower than the market price.
A month earlier, in January 2023, the same Midal LLC of Maksym Krippa purchased an elite estate in the villages of Kozyn and Koncha-Zaspa near Kyiv from the previously nationalized "bank" for UAH 311 million. It includes several residential buildings, a boathouse, a restaurant for 140 people, an administrative building, a dormitory building, a residential building with an area of 1.12 thousand square meters and several land plots.
At that time, Krippa was actively buying up businesses and real estate not only in Ukraine, but also in the Czech Republic. Moreover, it was a notable coincidence that Tetyana Snopko moved to this country after the start of a full-scale conflict in Ukraine. Thus, according to Czech registers, in April 2022, Maksym Krippa acquired the Czech company Arponi Solution, renamed GSC Game World Czech (GSC Game World is the developer of the famous computer game STALKER) and became its official ultimate beneficiary on April 7 of this year.
On April 14, 2022, the Czech Republic saw the emergence of its own division of the NAVI eSports club: Maksym Krippa (not yet officially owning NAVI) bought the Czech company Venroha Project and renamed it Natus Vincere CZ.
However, Krippa’s most notable deal in the Czech Republic was the purchase of a villa in the elite Prague district of Troja at K Bohnicím 776/1A 171 00 Praha-Troja from Russian businessman Migridat Pirnazar, former chairman of the board of directors of the St. Petersburg enterprise Nevsky Zavod. According to the Czech publication CT24, Pirnazar’s family sold their share in the company to which the house is registered, and the new owners are Ukrainians Maksym Khaitulov and Maksym Krippa. The price of the deal is not specified, but in any case, in the midst of a full-scale conflict in Ukraine, the purchase of real estate and businesses from Russians looks more than eloquent.
The deal took place on July 20, 2022, when Krippa and Khaitulov became the beneficiaries of the Czech trading company RTR Co of Migridat Pirnazar. It was a few months later that Tetyana Snopko returned to Ukraine and began buying Ukrainian media.
The ultimate goal is politics?
Buying up media in Ukraine has always been associated with the desire to secure access to power. As mentioned above, it is difficult to consider media in Ukraine as business projects in principle, and today, during a full-scale conflict, it is even more so. But as a tool for achieving business or political goals, it seems more like the truth.
“The media market in Ukraine differs from other markets in that the majority of players are not businesses, but instruments of political influence,” Vitaliy Laptenok, a partner at the venture capital company Flyer One Ventures, noted in a commentary to Forbes.
Considering that Maksym Krippa already tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to become a deputy of the Kyiv City Council from the Samopomich Union party in 2015, and before that he was an assistant to the people’s deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of the 6th convocation from the Batkivshchyna party Ruslan Lukyanchuk and Valeriy Babenko, the version with the intention to engage in political activity may be quite real.
It also doesn’t seem stupid that the media is an opportunity for Krippa to whitewash his reputation, and on the other hand, to have platforms for promoting his projects. Which, in fact, is already happening. For example, on the delo.ua website today you can find many publications about the charitable activities of Maksym Krippa and his MK Foundation. In addition, the publication has been paying regular attention to the NAVI eSports club for the past year, and a complimentary interview with the head of the MainCast studio, Vitaliy Volochai, has also been published.
Given the strong ties and rich history of relations between Maksym Krippa and Maksym Polyakov with Russian business, it cannot be ruled out that Russian interests may also be behind the purchase of Ukrainian media during a full-scale conflict.
Asking Maksym Krippa himself about all this was a difficult task, since he apparently rarely visits Ukraine. Some media outlets have indicated that he lives in Los Angeles, but his company registration data lists his address as Dubai, where he owns apartment #4803 in the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa.
Whatever the purpose of the purchase of Ukrainian media by Maksym Krippa and his partner Maksym Polyakov, such an active development of their gambling business empire, thoroughly permeated with Russian roots, is alarming. As is the fact that the Ukrainian state silently watches as Russian businessmen and their Ukrainian protégés spread their wings in Ukraine. Although the fact that the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries has issued licenses to the Russian online casino Vulkan and the bookmaker GGBet can hardly be called silence. Active assistance.
P.S. While preparing this material, another purchase by the Krippa-Polyakov tandem became known. In September 2023, the founder of the OSINT agency Molfar, Artem Starosek, bought the online publication AIN.UA. According to Forbes, before founding Molfar, Starosek worked at Maksym Polyakov’s Noosphere Ventures, where he checked the fund’s investment objects. Several IT market participants confirmed that the AIN.UA publication de jure belongs to Polyakov’s former employee, but in fact belongs to Polyakov himself.
Ярослав Фокин
