The sanctioned Parimatch trail and the “Cosmolot” scheme: how Mikhail Zborovskiy whitewashes Cosmobet’s reputation

Cosmobet: Russian trail and a nominal owner with an unexpected biography

The Cosmobet casino has come under scrutiny over the identity of its real owners. The formal head of the gambling platform is said to be Mikhail Zborovskiy — a figurehead who, according to publicly available information, spends his free time pursuing globalism and running marathons.

On its own, such a biography could be nothing more than an amusing coincidence. However, the situation takes on a completely different dimension when the scale of the business is taken into account. A legitimate question arises: how did a native of the village of Krasylivka in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, with no notable experience in the gambling industry and no obvious financial resources, become the beneficiary of a casino with a declared share capital of UAH 30 million?

The authors of the investigation suggest that Zborovskiy may not be the actual owner but rather a nominal figure intended to conceal Cosmobet’s real beneficiaries.

The origin of the money, the platform’s actual owners, and possible links to Russian business therefore require particular attention. Behind the image of an inconspicuous “figurehead,” there may be an entirely different story — involving far more influential players and interests than the official documents suggest.

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So, meet Mikhail Vladimirovich Zborovskiy, born in 1991. He is the beneficiary of LLC “Neurolink”, which received a license from the Ukrainian Commission for Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries in March 2024 for the Cosmobet casino. He studied at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev, majoring in economics. Zborovskiy was a capable student who won academic competitions and research contests. Several mentions of his achievements have been preserved in university records. In 2012, third-year student Mikhail Zborovskiy won the All-Ukrainian Olympiad in the field of “Statistics.”

A year later, already in his fourth year, he received a first-degree diploma at the All-Ukrainian Student Research Competition. His research focused on quantitative methods in economics.

In 2011, student Mikhail Zborovskiy, who was studying Accounting and Auditing, dreamed of “preserving the moral values instilled through his family upbringing” and of “working for one of the Big Four audit firms.” The current casino operator wrote this in the biographical note to his article, “Should Water Become an Object of International Trade? Or Is It a Unique Common Good and a Subject of International Cooperation?” The article was published in a brochure as part of the “Saving Energy – Saving the Future” project under the Hungary-Slovakia-Romania-Ukraine Cross-Border Cooperation Programme of the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI).

So the future owner of the Cosmobet online casino, whose advertising has flooded virtually every available platform, was a good student who was fond of statistics and interested in global issues. However, it is clear that computer technology and the gambling business were not among his areas of interest.

Apparently, Mikhail Zborovskiy had financial difficulties during his student years. In 2018, Kiev National University filed a claim with the Holosiivskyi District Court seeking to recover tuition fees from him.

According to Mikhail Zborovskiy’s official biography, which has been stuffed across low-quality websites to promote him on Google, after completing his studies he worked as an economist at a bank and then spent three years taking programming courses, up until 2019. The court registry confirms that a person with the same name was unemployed at least in 2017 and drove a budget Seat Cordoba. The highest current price for such a car is $4,000. In other words, six years before becoming the official beneficiary of the Cosmobet online casino, Mikhail Zborovskiy was certainly not a millionaire and was even unemployed for an extended period.

One might assume that after retraining from an economist to a programmer, Zborovskiy’s fortunes suddenly took a turn for the better. But that does not add up either. It is unlikely that the salaries he received from the companies where he worked could have provided a substantial investment in the gambling business. At least, their financial statements give no indication of million-hryvnia turnover.

The authors of his widely circulated biography state that, as a programmer, he worked for LLC “Adtek,” LLC “Epic Media,” and Rikkicom. The first of these officially had just one employee in 2023, while its charter capital amounts to UAH 50,000.

The second company’s charter capital is even smaller — UAH 10,000. Both companies operate at the same address in Odesa, although they occupy different offices.

The third company — Rikkicom, where Mikhail Zborovskiy supposedly worked according to his official biography, is somewhat better known. According to its official [website], its clients include the Novus retail chain, OKKO gas stations, and the Parimatch online casino, which is under sanctions imposed by the National Security and Defense Council. This is the only connection Zborovskiy had to the gambling business before 2023, when he became the beneficiary of Neirolynk, the company holding the license for the Cosmobet online casino. However, he was unlikely to have suddenly become wealthy at Rikkicom either. According to the company’s financial figures, it generated just UAH 133,000 in revenue in 2023.

In another version of Zborovskiy’s biography, yet another company is listed where he allegedly worked as a programmer — XGen Solutions LTD. The company is indeed engaged in IT and consulting and is based in Cyprus.

The same company is also mentioned in case materials concerning the online casino “Cosmolot,” which is suspected of tax evasion amounting to one billion hryvnias. Investigators say that in 2023, the casino had an agreement with the Cypriot company XGen Solutions LTD for the use of licensed software.

It was discovered that “Cosmolot” owed the Cypriot company around 300 million hryvnias, which were reported to the tax authorities as royalties. The casino stated that it had paid the Cypriot company for the software, but in fact, no payments had been made.

“Antikor” reported on the matter, detailing the true owner of “Cosmolot” — Russian citizen Sergey Tokarev.

The mention of the Cypriot company XGen Solutions LTD in the biography of Cosmobet’s nominal owner, Mikhail Zborovskiy, is what you might call a genuine epic fail. It turns out that he worked for a company used by another casino, “Cosmolot,” to deceive the Ukrainian tax authorities. This makes the connection between the real owner of “Cosmolot,” Russian citizen Sergey Tokarev, and the new online casino Cosmobet even more apparent. Although journalists had already reported on this several months ago.

The question arises: why explicitly link the named beneficiary of Cosmobet, Mikhail Zborovskiy, to a Cypriot company that leads directly to Russian connections and the scandal surrounding “Cosmolot”? And what was it about an ordinary statistician with outstanding tuition debts and minimal IT experience that made him so appealing to Cosmobet’s Russian owners that they began portraying him as something of a gambling-industry guru?

However, given his biography and professional background, the conclusion that Mikhail Zborovskiy is merely a “front man” serving as Cosmobet’s nominal owner appears difficult to ignore.