Maksym Kryppa: From porn business to gambling empire - Who really stands behind S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
01.11.2024 20:10
In the fall of 2023, the gaming community was shocked by the news of a change in the beneficiary of GSC Game World, the developer of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. According to Ukrainian and Czech registers, the new owner of the studio became a little-known businessman Maksym Krіppa.
Finding his real photos online is quite a quest. The information about him is even less. And it’s not for nothing.
Maksym Krіppa was born in 1977. Finding his real photos online is impossible. The man is connected with the porn business, and the gambling online industry of casinos, and with the scandalous acquisition of the capital’s hotel "Dnipro," etc. That’s why he tries in every way to hide all these facts from publicity and independent media. Thanks to SERM services from leading agencies, Mr. Krіppa is now not a businessman but a "volcanologist," "footballer," "gardener," etc.
Krіppa began with fake dating sites. The entire business was built on the fact that fake photos and profiles of girls were uploaded to the site, for acquaintance with whom foreigners were willing to pay dollars. Raising the bar, Krіppa began to sell access to "hot" photos and erotic chat. Helping him with this were hired web models who satisfied clients’ requests.
According to many sources, Maksym Krіppa owns the "Vulkan" casino and the betting company GGbet.
The online casino network "Vulkan" is still successfully operating in Russia. Krіppa’s patron in this country is the head of "Rostelecom" Mikhail Oseevsky. And it is thanks to him that Krіppa ’s casino promotions are not subject to "Rospotrebnadzor" prohibitions.
As for the Russian trace, it is known that for a long time, Maksym Krіppa worked for Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev as a manager and promoted his projects in Ukraine. It was Malofeev who helped his CEO partially bypass gambling bans in the Russian Federation — for a long time Malofeev controlled Rostelecom, owning 7.22% of the provider’s shares.
IT companies EvoPlay and Clone Fish are associated with Krіppa and Malofeev. Krіppa ’s partner in the gambling business became an American businessman with Ukrainian roots, Max Polyakov, who made a fortune on dating and erotic web chats in Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia.
In the early 2010s, Polyakov and Krіppa decided to expand their gambling assets and opened a joint business in the online casino field. The joint company’s office was located in the capital of Ukraine - Kyiv.
The most successful acquisition of the Krіppa-Polyakov group was the slot machine brands Vulkan and Vulkan. EvoPlay acquired exclusive rights to use the product under these names in the company Ritzio. All online casinos previously operating under the "Vulkan" label were successfully closed by EvoPlay.
When EvoPlay dealt with the last competitors operating under the "Vulkan" brand, Krіppa and Polyakov began to develop gambling resources under this name themselves. New "Vulkans" began to appear in batches. Every day a dozen similar gambling resources with identical design and game sets are launched. Most of them have EvoPlay software products.
The brand owners personally stamp sites in huge volumes without providing owners’ details or registration data. Thus, businessmen have the opportunity to make money in markets where online gambling is prohibited. Neither Krіppa nor Polyakov risk anything. Neither complaints nor courts can reach the real owners and prove their involvement in anonymous sites. The system works like a hydra’s heads. When one site is blocked, 10 clones with similar addresses and identical templates appear.
Having tasted success with Vulkans, Krіppa and Polyakov expanded their activities by launching several other large projects, including CasinoX and JoyCasino. These projects developed through aggressive marketing, which Polyakov had already used while promoting dating resources. As a result, we all know that Batman told the Joker how to solve access issues to Joy Casino during the final battle. However, it wasn’t only Batman. Aggressive advertising led to numerous memes on the internet, further contributing to the development of Krіppa and Polyakov’s gambling resources.
Resources
The story of selling a hotel in the center of Kyiv into the hands of a person connected with Russian oligarch Malofeev and whose funds for this purchase are unknown was somewhat gossiped about and forgotten. In September 2022, Ukrainian Forbes, citing its own sources, named Krіppaas the owner of the betting operator GGBet and also as the new owner of the famous Ukrainian esports organization NAVI.
According to media reports, the change of owner took place back in 2020. But Youcontrol recorded it only in July 2022, when Krіppa, through "Natus Vincere Esports LLC" (British Virgin Islands), became the beneficiary of "Navi U.A.LTD," which was previously owned by NAVI founder Oleksandr Kokhanovsky (the latter, like Krіppa , promotes Russian business interests in Ukraine).
It was Kokhanovsky who claimed to be the real buyer of the capital hotel "Dnipro," which was bought in 2020 by LLC "Smartland" for 1.1 billion hryvnias. Although at that time, the firm’s founders were its director Maksym Tereshchuk and LLC Ice Town Oleksiy Ihunyn.
For 311.11 million hryvnias, Maksym Krіppa bought several properties in the most elite locations. Along the Stolychne Highway, 133 is a restaurant with 140 seats and two buildings (residential and administrative) included in the recreation base Koncha-Zaspa.
More valuable assets are located in Kozyn. This is a large house with an area of 1128 square meters at 2-A Monashynska Street. Next to it is a boathouse, a guest house with a total area of 228 square meters, and three outbuildings, each with an area of about 226 square meters. Next door is another residential house at 226 square meters.
In addition, the package includes three land plots with a total area of over a hectare for building and serving houses in the "Krayvid" residential complex (Kozyn) and 10 acres in this residential complex for personal farming. This entire list, compared to the price, causes as much bewilderment as the price of the hotel "Dnipro." But this surprise is multiplied by the background of the buyer, who turned out to be Maksym Krіppa .
Krіppa from the USA
As of today, Maksym Krіppa , according to Forbes, resides in Los Angeles. His name is associated with the betting operator GGBet, which, according to specialists, bought the team NAVI. From 2017 to 2020, the betting operator was a sponsor of NAVI. In 2020, NAVI changed its title partner to 1xBet, and a year later returned to GGBet.
Both NAVI and GGBet have legal entities in Cyprus. The official site NaVi.gg is managed by Cypriot Natus Vincere Esport CY. It also owns three trademarks of the esports team registered in 2020. For 2019 and 2020, the company’s revenue amounted to €9.06 million, and the net profit was only €8986, according to audit reporting data.
The GG.bet website is managed by Cypriot Brivio Ltd, registered on November 22, 2012. It owns two GGBet trademarks registered in the USA and another one in Europe. By 2020, Brivio was loss-making, going into a negative balance of €445,583. In 2020, the company suddenly earned €14.7 million. The company from Curacao Invicta Networks NV owns Brivio and provides all licensed gaming services. Both companies also offer services under the Vulkan Vegas brand.
Natus Vincere Esport CY and Brivio are not directly connected. However, they were serviced by the same company - One World. It is said on their website that it is "one of the leaders in Cyprus in the field of corporate and consulting services." Both have the same correspondence contacts, which are handled by another Cypriot consulting company Pandaserve Ltd. The auditor is also the same - Cypriot Priamus Audit Ltd. The 2020 financial statements for both companies were even checked by one auditor Andreas Argyrou.
How Maksym Krіppa ’s name fits into this configuration is unknown. But judging by his biography, Krіppa is clearly not an independent figure, growing from a small porn trader (there is also such an episode in his biography) into a fraudster of international scale. Who exactly stands behind the figure of the "buyer" of the hotel, the property complex in Kozyn, and the "owner" of NAVI, Maksym Krіppa?
In this regard, it is worth mentioning the 2015 story when Krіppa , being a candidate for the Kyiv City Council from "Samopomich," traded places on the party’s list. He was not authorized to do so. After the fact of unauthorized trading came out, Krіppa fled to Moscow, where he safely weathered the storm. And no one there bothered him for some reason.
There is also information that the businessman has a criminal record for fraud.
Юрий Лобачев
