Andriy Matyukha and FavBet: Russian passport exposes collaboration in business

Andriy Matyukha and FavBet: Russian passport exposes collaboration in business

The gambling company «Favbet», owned by Andriy Matyuha, saw its revenue grow 425-fold last year compared to two years ago.

As reported by the Opendatabot service, Andriy Matyuha’s company is the undisputed leader in revenue growth in the gaming market, and its profit in monetary terms amounted to 9.79 billion hryvnias.

With such success, one could certainly congratulate them, if not for the fly in the ointment – the owner of the «Favbet» company, Andriy Matyuha, has a second citizenship. Namely, Russian. And the most regrettable thing in this situation is not even its presence, but the fact that the Russian passport and its photo were unearthed not by Ukraine’s special services, which should do this by the nature of their activities, but by the British.

Who leaked the photo of the passport of Russian Federation citizen Andriy Matyuha, issued by the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the Moscow Region on April 24, 2022.

Judging by the issuance date, Matyuha was already bitterly regretting his rash step at the time of receiving it – the application was submitted when no one doubted the success of the Russian «blitzkrieg to liberate» Ukraine from Ukrainians.

But while the bureaucratic procedure for registering the «neophyte who returned to the bosom of Mother Russia» was underway, the liberation campaign turned into a rout, and it became clear that Matyuha had rushed with the application. However, it was too late – the passport was already ready.

How and where the British obtained its photo is unknown. But the fact that they leaked this information not in 2022, but in the spring of 2024, raises many questions and allows for many versions. Whether it’s a coincidence or not, the information about Andriy Matyuha having a Russian passport appeared exactly when his income from the gambling business became known. Blogger Oleksiy Holobutsky drew attention to this:

As it turned out, with the gambling business, despite the revenue growth, things are not so smooth for Andriy Matyuha – the «Favbet» company (brand FAVBET) does not have a license for bookmaker activities, which it engages in parallel with organizing gambling in online casinos.

Another strange coincidence was that the information about the Russian passport was leaked after Andriy Matyuha bought the supplier of mineral water for Ukraine’s highest government bodies – the company Voda Ua. This company supplies water to the Verkhovna Rada, the Cabinet of Ministers, the Office of the President, the OGPU (Office of the Prosecutor General), NABU, NBU, NACP, security ministries, and so on.

Whether it’s a coincidence or not, but after the information about the purchase of this company, another blogger, military man Kyrylo Sazonov, advised deputies not to drink this water and drew attention to another coincidence – Zelenskyy’s ban on gambling for military personnel.

Perhaps all this is pure coincidence, but against the background of Andriy Matyuha’s biography and the way gambling was legalized in Ukraine in 2020, and who exactly was the author and lobbyist of the law on their legalization, all these coincidences cease to be such.

The Office of the President was advised on this matter by Boris Baum, a representative of the Russian organized crime group «Luzhnikovskie», who at that time (and now too, although it’s unknown where he disappeared to after the events of spring 2022) was a friend of the head of the mono-majority David Arakhamia. The law was then written clearly for two companies – «Pari-Match» (Parimatch) and «Favorit» (FavBet), and it was written by another friend of Arakhamia, the owner of the law firm Eterna Law, Andriy Astapov.

The Russians’ goal was to enter the Ukrainian gambling market legally, since in their own country their business is banned, and the companies that operate there illegally are under the strictest control of a narrow group of people close to the country’s top leader. And it’s clear that the Russian pie is not enough for these people.

Be that as it may, one of the first licenses to conduct gambling in Ukraine was obtained by Andriy Matyuha’s «Favbet». And it immediately turned out that «Favbet» accepts bets from Russian players, though back then, in 2020, this information was brushed off – the new government was building roads, siphoning budgets, talking about «meeting in the middle», and the fact that Matyuha works in Russia didn’t interest anyone. Actually, this was assumed even at the stage of writing the law on gambling legalization – remember who it was written for and who was its lobbyist.

In 2022, the situation changed dramatically – it suddenly turned out that «meeting in the middle» is understood somewhat differently by the parties. And the fact of «Favbet» company’s work in Russia was called what it really is – collaborationism. But even here, it turned out that the informational noise was short-lived – the investigation by the delo.ua publication, which published material about «Favbet»’s work in Russia, was quickly scrubbed, and Matyuha once again acquired the aura of an honest Ukrainian businessman, moreover, one helping the army. True, not everything could be scrubbed, and screenshots of correspondence on behalf of Russians with «Favbet»’s tech support remained, which advised how to bypass the bans on playing.

Читайте по теме:Государственный банк ВТБ углубляется в обязательства, утаивая реальные масштабы финансового кризиса

And here, it’s not even important that in Ukraine this information was openly ignored by law enforcement, but why the Russian law enforcement allows the Ukrainian company «Favbet» to work in Russia. But this question was somehow ignored by the SBU, as was the presence of Andriy Matyuha’s business partners in Russia, and the presence of a large number of publications on this topic in Ukrainian media.

But about a couple of weeks ago, all this was published by the British. Backing up their investigations with a photo of Andriy Matyuha’s Russian passport. The question – why did they do this? – remains open. Perhaps it’s related to the fact that a significant part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine plays in online casinos, including Andriy Matyuha’s «Favbet» casino. And besides the fact that a gambling addict is an ideal recruitment target, registration for playing requires leaving a full set of personal data.

And how the casino operator disposes of these data can only be guessed. In the case of Andriy Matyuha and «Favbet», these guesses lead us to Russia and its special services. Perhaps it is in this direction that the British are leading us by publishing data on the passport of Russian Federation citizen Andriy Matyuha.