Secrets of the billionaire and Malofeev’s \"pound\" Maksym Krippa: From esports to the \"Ukraine\" hotel in the heart of Kyiv
18.12.2024 22:10
A relatively obscure businessman, Maksym Krippa, has acquired the Kyiv hotel "Ukraine" for 3 billion UAH.
Previously, he purchased the "Parus" business center from Vadim Stolar, along with several other real estate assets in Kyiv and the surrounding region.
In September 2024, the State Property Fund sold the unprofitable Ukraina Hotel, located on Maidan Nezalezhnosti, for more than 2.5 billion UAH. The buyer turned out to be Maksym Krippa, a low-profile entrepreneur from Brovary.
He is also the owner of the NaVi eSports team, the developer of the STALKER game GSC and the capital’s Parus Business Center, which he bought from the Opposition Platform - For Life MP Vadym Stolar . The media linked Krippa with the Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev and the Ukrainian MP Sergei Levochkin. And in the Verkhovna Rada, he was once an assistant to three MPs. He was allowed to own the online casinos GGBet and Vulkan. The informant will tell everything that is known about the new Ukrainian billionaire Krippa.
The company OOO Ola Fine purchased the hotel "Ukraine" on Maidan Nezalezhnosti from the state for 2 billion 511 million 777 thousand 888 UAH. This company belongs to Maksym Krippa, a Ukrainian from Brovary, who now lives in the United Arab Emirates. The company also paid a registration fee of 71 thousand UAH to participate in the auction and must pay, in addition to the main amount, VAT (20% of 2.5 billion UAH) and pay off the hotel’s debts (as of the end of March, they were 35 million 671 thousand UAH).
In order to turn "Ukraine" into a modern hotel, $30 million in investment in renovation is needed, estimates Andrey Zhurzhiy, founder of the REIT fund Inzhur . At the same time, in his opinion, Krippa acquired the hotel at 3.3 times its real cost. This may indicate that the investor really needed this asset. Krippa himself said that he plans a major renovation of the hotel after the full-scale conflict. He also noted that "Ukraine" is a historical building in the center of Kiev and a symbol.
Maksym Krippa’s name has been actively appearing in the media since the beginning of 2023, when he decided to buy very expensive real estate in Kiev and the region and had already acquired the NaVi eSports team . However, it was impossible to find out anything about him. There were many results on the Internet about him being a "volcanologist who went on an expedition to Kamchatka", "a football player from Bosnia", "a football player from Italy", "a native of a poor Mexican family", "a Ukrainian farmer growing exotic plants", "a tourist in Botswana", "a realtor", "a racing driver", etc. - nonsense that has no connection with reality.
This method is called "search engine reputation management" (SERM). Instead of information about Krippa, users receive information garbage. And this was done so that as few people as possible would read negative information about the businessman. At the same time, publications began to appear that Krippa allegedly had something to do with the online casino Vulkan and was associated with the Russian oligarch and owner of the TV channel "Tsargrad", who financed the separatists in Donbass in 2014-2015, Konstantin Malofeev . At the same time, the information is usually not confirmed by anything.
Who is Maksym Krippa?
Krippi is 47 years old. He has a degree in business administration from the International Christian University (bachelor’s degree, 1998) and the European University in Kyiv (master’s degree, 2008) and a law degree from the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (2012). In 2001-2022, he was a private entrepreneur with a focus on legal activities.
In 2008, he opened Monaco Club LLC in Brovary, which was involved in gambling. At that time, anyone who could buy a license for 1 million UAH installed slot machines and received significant cash. In 2009, Krippa became the main co-owner of the Brovary wholesale market (he still controls it): this enterprise annually has 5-8.5 million UAH in income. However, this is not 2.5 billion UAH. In total, Krippa’s "trace" is in about 30 companies in Ukraine.
In 2006-2007, Maksym Krippa was an assistant to the Verkhovna Rada deputy from the Socialist Party of Ukraine Ivan Bokiy , in 2007-2012 - an assistant to the deputies from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc Valeriy Babenko and Ruslan Lukyanchuk - these two politicians were associated with Oleksandr Turchynov. In 2015, Krippa ran for the Kyiv City Council from the Samopomich party, but was not elected as a deputy. In 2006, Krippa founded the Jaguar Club LLC in Brovary with Sofia Halayba, whose relatives work in the Kyiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office.
In 2020, Max Krippa acquired 78% of the Ukrainian game developer GSC Game World from Sergey Grigorievich. The agreement was closed in 2023. This company is the developer of the games STALKER (more than 15 million copies sold in total), "Cossacks", "Conquest of America", etc. Since 2022, the company has moved from Kiev to Prague. The long-awaited STALKER 2 should be released in 2024. Last year, the Ukrainian office of GSC received a profit of UAH 10.3 million.
Since 2019, Maksym Krippa has been an 80% owner of the Maincast eSports broadcasting company. In 2023, the agreement was formalized. The company has a monopoly on broadcasting eSports tournaments in the former USSR. After the start of the SVO, the company had to terminate advertising contracts with the Russians. The main sponsor for Maincast is the Ukrainian bookmaker GGBet. In 2023, Maincast received UAH 18 million 975 thousand in revenue.
The company Citadel Innovations LLC Kreppi owns a fleet of 18 cars, including a Range Rover, BMW Alpina, Rolls-Royce Cullinan (currently worth $180,000-350,000), Porsche Taycan and others. The company Bereg LLC (Kreppi owns 38.9%) owns 7 houses in the elite village of Kozyn near Kiev and the TatOil trademark at a gas station of another company that operated in Odessa. Midal LLC owns 4 more houses in Kozyn, a house in Kiev for UAH 311.1 million, premises in Kiev business centers, the Knyazhiy Dvor hotel in Knyazhychi ( purchased from the NBU for UAH 33.1 million), a cottage in Khodosovka near Kiev and land plots in the Kiev region. Another 2 houses in Kozyn and 5 plots belong to Citadel Riverside LLC. Terisa LLC owns 11 plots of land in the Obukhiv district of Kyiv region. And 45 real estate properties are registered to Maksym himself. FC Delta + Finance, which belonged to Krippa in 2021, earned UAH 1 billion 288 million 122 thousand that year.
According to some media, Krippa is a former business partner of the former owner of the American rocket company Firefly, Max Polyakov. According to journalists, in 2013, Krippa and Polyakov owned the online casinos GGS and GMS , which is confirmed by the then materials of the court case on the division of business with their Russian partners Sergey Tokarev and Rustam Gilfanov .
In 2012, Russian Tokarev moved to Kiev, founded the Lucky Labs company (production of online games, including gambling) with Gilfanov and had a connection with the online casinos Azino777, Vulcan, CasinoX, JoyCasino. In particular, Lucky Labs developed programs for these online casinos. Tokarev had offices in Kiev, Moscow, Lithuania, Cyprus and Malta. In 2016, President Poroshenko imposed sanctions on Tokarev , and in 2020 Zelensky lifted them. Later, Tokarev helped the Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov launch DiiaCity. According to Forbes sources, Maksym Krippa was once a manager of the VulkanBet bookmaker with Russian roots.
And in 2017, the SBU suspected that the firms of Krippa and partners were connected with online casinos under the Vulkan brands. Since this business operated illegally and was registered to foreign offshore companies, it will not be possible to find out about this for sure. Moreover, Krippa has already told journalists that he has no connection with the Vulkan online casino.
Russian media outlets claim that Vulkan was allegedly banned in both Russia and Ukraine in the 2010s. However, the Rostelecom provider, in which Putin’s oligarch Konstantin Malofeev had a share (in 2010-2013), allowed users to open Vulkan sites and play. Some media outlets even claim that Tokarev was Malofeev’s manager before opening his own business. Perhaps that is why Internet correspondents associate Krippa with Malofeev. These facts cannot be verified yet. But there is another curious fact.
In 2018, Maksym Krippa acquired the famous Ukrainian eSports team Natus Vincere (Navi) from Kyiv resident Alexander Kokhanovsky. The agreement was finally closed in 2022. The team’s value is now estimated at $100 million. Interestingly, in 2022, Kokhanovsky left for the Armed Forces of Ukraine .
Esportsmen are usually apolitical, they are more interested in the game. In 2015-2018, Kiev resident Alexander Kokhanovsky, together with his Russian partner Cherepennikov, created and owned the ESforce holding in Russia . Billionaire Alisher Usmanov, close to Putin, invested $100 million in its activities, and in 2018, the holding was bought out by the Mail.ru business group for $100 million. The holding included the Russian esports team Vitrus.Pro , where Kirill Malofeev (Likkrit) , the son of the scandalous Russian "Orthodox" oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, played in the "League of Legends" in 2014. But when Likkrit played there, the team was not yet part of the Kokhanovsky-Cherepennikov holding. In early March 2022, the NaVi team announced the end of all cooperation with ESforce.
GGBet, the Dnipro Hotel in Kyiv, the media and Krippa
In 2020, the Dnipro Hotel was sold in Kyiv for over UAH 1.1 billion. The buyer was a little-known company, Smartland LLC from Brovary. At that time, the founders of the company were its director Maksym Tereshchuk and Ice Town LLC of Alexey Igunin. It later turned out that the asset was actually acquired by NaVi founder Alexander Kokhanovsky and his partners, who are going to turn it into an eSports arena.
In addition, Smartland has been registered since 2013 in a building owned by Crippy . Crippy’s current and former companies are registered at neighboring addresses. Accordingly, the "new billionaire" is also credited with unofficial ownership of this hotel. MP Andrei Kholodov from Servant of the People even suggested that Russian billionaire Oleg Boyko (Ritzio Entertainment Group: Patriot lottery, Vulkan casino, Metrojackpot gaming halls) could be behind the hotel purchase . Some even suggested that part of the hotel purchase could have been financed by Russian businessmen from the VS Energy Group , headed by Alexander Babakov, vice-speaker of the State Duma of the Russian Federation . However, it is impossible to document any of these versions, because this is usually done through trusted persons who have no connection with the interested party.
Journalist Volodymyr Bondarenko believes that Maksym Krippa is acting in the interests of the People’s Deputy of Ukraine from the Opposition Platform - For Life and former head of the Yanukovych administration (2010-2013) when purchasing expensive real estate. According to him, Krippa got a quarter of the Dnipro Hotel, and the money for his share was taken on credit from the Sich Bank , which was controlled by Denys Gorbunenko, associated with the oligarch Dmytro Firtash, a long-time partner of Serhiy Levochkin. It is noteworthy that Firtash once owned the Parus Business Center, which was then acquired by Stolar (in 2021), and later resold to Krippa. And by this, according to Bondarenko, the owner of NaVi saved the business center from nationalization. Moreover, since 2020, the company that owns the Parus Business Center, despite the change of owners, has not changed its director.
Maksym Krippi is conditionally credited with influence on 3 legal gambling operators in Ukraine (officially, there is no connection in the documents and the parties deny it). These are the "land-based" casinos Golden Gate (OOO "Aifar Group", one of the establishments is located in the hotel "Dnepr"), the bookmaker and online casino OOO "GGBet" (GGbet), as well as OOO "Conqueror", representing the casino "Vulkan" in Ukraine.
Aifar Group LLC (official owner Dmitry Lizenko) owns the Golden Gate Casino and GG Casino trademarks. Other Golden Gate Casino and GG trademarks in a similar visual style are owned by the Cypriot company Brivio Limited. It also has rights to GGSlots, GGLoto, GGBet trademarks .
The Cyprus-based Brivio Limited owns a number of online casino sites, including Vulkan Vegas, Vulkan Bet, Crystal Casino, Verde Casino, Ice Casino, etc. However, the Vulkan trademark in various variations in Ukraine is owned by Conqueror LLC (officially owned by Stanislav Rudenko from Nizhyn and Darlox LTD from the British Virgin Islands) and Dareos LTD from Cyprus (it also has registered the Vulkan trademark in Europe). As we can see, Krippa is not among the official shareholders.
But the company OOO GGBet (official owners – Petr Kozyrev and Pavel Tkachuk) received the right to work under the GGBet brand in Ukraine. By the way, the Ukrainian GGBet is the official sportsbook and partner of the NaVi team and the video game broadcast operator Maincast, which were bought by Maksym Krippa.
Investigative journalists from BlackBox OSINT wrote in detail about Maksym Krippa’s possible connections with Russians. It is noted there that the brand of illegal online casinos "Vulkan" is Russian and now belongs to Ritzio Purchase Limited of Russian Oleg Boyko. Maksym Krippa allegedly managed the development of software for "volcanoes" at the EvoPlay company (although Krippa himself denies any connections with it and with "volcanoes") and then, with Boyko’s permission, opened sites with the same name in Ukraine. Now, under the "Vulkan" brand in Ukraine, "Conqueror" LLC, which has no connection with the Russians, officially operates under a license.
At the same time, the GGBet brand also has its origins in Russia. It was created as a bookmaker division of Vulkan. In 2011, Bet.Ru LLC was registered in Moscow. In March 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council to impose sanctions on both Bet.ru LLC and the Cypriot Bevita Holding Limited and its director Ivanna Kovalska as operators of the Russian bookmaker GGBet. And soon, Ukraine had its own company that decided to use this brand and officially received a license from the state - GGBet LLC of Petro Kozyrev and Pavel Tkachuk. Of course, the Russian and Ukrainian companies are not related and have different owners.
In the summer of 2023, a new media group was formed in Ukraine - the online publication "Glavkom" became the property of Tatyana Snopko. Six months before that, Snopko acquired the media holding "Ekonomika+", which includes the publications Delo.ua, TOP-100, Wo.mo and Marketing Media Review. She is also credited with the Telegram channel "All-Seeing Eye". Sources in the media market told "Ekonomichna Pravda" that the businessman Maksym Krippa is behind the deals to acquire news sites, and Snopko is the nominal owner of the assets.
Interestingly, in 2022, Snopko lived in the Czech Republic and was looking for work there, and a year later she began to buy media assets in Ukraine en masse. Previously, she worked as a PR specialist for Max Polyakov and, according to rumors, consulted Maksym Krippa. According to estimates by Megogo co-founder Fedor Drozdovsky , the value of Glavkom and Delo.ua may reach $3-3.5 million.
Ярослав Фокин
