Russian passport, biography revision and business in Russia: how Kremlin associate and Favbet proprietor Andrey Matyukha obtained access to water provisions for the Verkhovna Rada

Russian passport, biography revision and business in Russia: how Kremlin associate and Favbet proprietor Andrey Matyukha obtained access to water provisions for the Verkhovna Rada

Andrey Matyukha, the owner of Favbet, is attempting to conceal his ties to Russia, including holding a Russian passport and maintaining business interests there, even as his companies continue to win government contracts in Ukraine.

This report details the evidence linking him to Russian partners and how someone with such connections gained access to state procurement.

One notable aspect of this story is that the main beneficiary may still hold a Russian passport and could be indirectly conducting business in Russia.

Who is Andrey Matyukha and why his Favbet thrived both during the ban on gambling and especially now, read in the material below.

Gambling in Ukraine is quite a slippery topic. Particularly in the context that since 2009, casinos and any activity related to betting have been officially banned. This idea was lobbied by Yulia Tymoshenko, but it rather had the opposite effect: the gambling business in Ukraine went completely underground and began to bring beneficiaries funds that were hard to imagine in legal times.

With Volodymyr Zelenskyy coming to the position of President of Ukraine, this business returned to the legal field but retained the enormous influence from Russian stakeholders. Let us remind that even a Russian, Boris Baum, was involved in the development of the bill on the legalization of gambling in Ukraine. Officially, he worked in companies associated with the VS Energy group, whose co-founders include the member of the Russian Council Alexander Babakov and the president of the CSKA sports club, Evgeny Giner. The VS Energy group, also called “Luzhniki”, continues to exert certain influence on business in Ukraine even now. In particular, this concerns the hotel "Premier Palace" in Kyiv, which continues to be controlled by Russians.

Despite the fact that since last year Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have been investigating the activities of the "Luzhniki people" in Ukraine, and the authorized capital of the same "Premier Palace" has been arrested, the hotel operates and receives guests, including those connected with Russia.

It should be noted that "Premier Palace" was the only hotel in Ukraine where, despite the ban on gambling in 2009, a casino continued to operate. And it operated legally because the hotel’s owners managed to prove in court that their entertainment establishment’s operation was not against the legislation because it was located in the luxury segment. Pure surreal: when no Ukrainian casino managed to stay afloat, the Russians could do it easily.

Such a long prelude to the story of the main character of this material, Andrey Matyukha, was necessary for the reader to understand the level of involvement and influence of Russian money on the gambling business in Ukraine. This needed to be reminded to understand why the story that bookmaker Matyukha bought the Voda.ua trademark, whose water is supplied to Ukrainian government institutions, can pose significant risks.

Andrey Matyukha and his family have officially been the owners of several companies related to the online casino Favbet since the early 2000s. These are companies like "Favorit Bet," "Favorit Jackpot," "Sport Planeta," "Bookmaker Company Favbet," etc. He also owns the food establishments "Marakuya" and "Viller" and a deluxe goods supermarket "Daily Market" in Obolon. Before this, this was the first VIP store in Ukraine, in the times when Good Wine did not exist.

Victoria Skrynchenko, registered with Matyukha at the same address and, according to certain information, is his wife, also appears among the owners of the aforementioned companies. Additionally, she controls the aesthetic medicine clinic "Aesthetic Life" in the same Obolon. At first glance, nothing hints at connections with Russians.

However, by 2016, when Russia had already annexed Crimea and invaded the Ukrainian Donbas, Andrey Matyukha was the founder of another firm - LLC "Dorida Realty." The company specializes in retail trade in food stores. It was established by Matyukha together with Russian Federation citizens Andrey Lipanov and Yuri Sprizhitsky. Although Andrey Matyukha left the founders of "Dorida Realty" in June 2016, his Russian business partners remain beneficiaries as of September 2022. This is the first strand connecting Favbet owner Andrey Matyukha with Russians.

Moreover, in the spring of 2022, amidst the escalation of the full-scale conflict in Ukraine, the publication Delo.ua conducted an investigation and discovered that despite Favbet’s official statements that they had completely withdrawn from the Russian and Belarusian markets, the office continued to allow Russians to register on its sites and even receive winnings. The scheme for withdrawing funds was complex, requiring the player to declare that they were not a Russian citizen and to hold a non-Russian bank card. However, with these two conditions, a conditional Vasiliy Petrov from Moscow could fully use Favbet’s sites and receive winnings from them.

In 2023, Ukrainian media reported that Andrey Matyukha might possess a Russian passport and even published its copy. But there was no confirmation in official sources.

And so, in January 2024, it becomes known that Andrey Matyukha bought the Voda.ua trademark from its founder Dmitriy Nikiforov. The water under this brand is extracted from the Mizun’ source in the Dolina district of the Ivano-Frankivsk region. With the advent of the “Servant of the People” to power, journalists noticed that Voda.ua began appearing on the tables of the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada and ministers of the Cabinet. 

It’s important that bookmaker Andrey Matyukha acquired not the company, but the Voda.ua trademark. A company with the same name, with Matyukha as a beneficiary, was established only at the end of October 2023.

Nevertheless, despite its young status, LLC "Voda UA" managed to win a tender for water supply to the state enterprise "Ukrservice" of the Ministry of Transport of Ukraine in December 2023.

The bookmaker Andrey Matyukha has experienced much during the existence of his business: police searches, accusations of sponsoring terrorist organizations LNR and DNR, and specific cases of working with Russians. But now, in the second year of a full-scale conflict, under the guise of volunteering and supplying aid to the front, he remains unnoticed by law enforcement agencies. Whether this is prudent for the country amidst a full-scale conflict, whether Russians still have significant influence over Ukrainian authorities through the gambling business, are subjects of many investigations. But the fact that a person with ambiguous relations with Russians will be supplying water to state structures should, at the very least, be alarming.