On January 12, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyi, signed a decree on the application of sanctions against the Latvian company with Russian roots, Royal Pay Europe, which is a partner of the Russian bookmaker 1xBet.
This is a company that provides services in the field of electronic commerce, as well as electronic payment processing services. Royal Pay Europe was founded in 2016 by Russian citizen Sergey Kondratenko and, according to the media, is a partner of the notorious Russian bookmaker 1xBet and can transfer payments to offshore bookmakers and online casinos. In 2017, Royal Pay Europe received an e-money license in the UK, which gave it the right to accept payments and service card transactions in European and UK jurisdictions.
According to the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, sanctions against Royal Pay Europe have been imposed for 5 years and include the blocking of its assets in Ukraine, a ban on the withdrawal of its capital outside the country, suspension of financial and economic obligations, as well as a ban on participation in privatization and leasing of state property and limiting the rights of the specified company to dispose of securities.
The State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine has already blocked over UAH 2 billion in accounts related to Royal Pay Europe. “This means that they are preserved for further confiscation within the framework of the current legislation and the restoration of Ukraine,” writes the “Mirror of the Week” publication.
As noted by sources in the Office of the President of Ukraine, the head of state and the National Security Council, after a wide response caused by the subversive activities of the Russian bookmaker 1xBet, seriously took up his attempts to enter the Ukrainian market. It is reported that the Russian bookmaker itself, Tvoya Bettingova Kompaniya LLC, which represents 1xBet in Ukraine, and three citizens of the Russian Federation who are the founders of 1xBet – Roman Semiokhin, Serhii Karshkov and Dmytro Kazorin – will be the next to be sanctioned. In addition, the possibility of imposing sanctions on other Ukrainian companies that helped the Russian bookmaker to enter the Ukrainian market is not excluded.
As you know, in the spring of 2022, at the height of the Russian Federation’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries issued two licenses to the Russian bookmaker 1xBet to work in Ukraine. However, after a series of journalistic investigations about 1xBet’s connections with the special services of the Russian Federation and after 25,000 Ukrainians signed a petition to President Zelensky in a week, KRAIL was forced to cancel the issued licenses in September 2022. The Russian bookmaker is trying to challenge this decision in court today, and meanwhile Ukrainians have collected signatures on a petition demanding sanctions be imposed on a number of other companies related to 1xBet that continue to work in Ukraine.
