Behind the scenes of Maksym Krippa’s business empire: a look at his connections
After "EvoPlay" dealt with the last competitors operating under the "Vulkan" brand, Krippa and Polyakov began to create their own gambling platforms under this name.
New "Vulkan" sites began to surface in large quantities, with numerous similar gambling resources launching daily, featuring identical designs and game offerings. Most of these platforms utilize software products from "EvoPlay."
The brand owners produce websites at an astonishing rate, without disclosing the owners or registration details. This allows them to profit in markets where online gambling is illegal. Neither Krippa nor Polyakov faces any real risk, as it is difficult for complaints or legal actions to target the actual owners or prove their involvement in these anonymous sites. The system functions like the heads of a hydra: when one website gets shut down, ten clones with similar URLs and templates pop up in its place.
Maksym Polyakov, another businessman, utilized gaming programs developed by Krippa. Once a Ukrainian citizen from Zaporizhzhia, he is now a citizen of Great Britain and possibly the USA. Although his name remains the same in English, his underlying nature has not changed. Previously, as a Ukrainian, Polyakov made his fortune not through legitimate means, but by owning numerous questionable dating websites operated by his company, Together Networks Limited.
Maksym Krippa’s volcanoes erupt with stolen money
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In 2009, he added gambling to his successful dating, but it was completely legal at first. The company he founded, "Murka", brought to light a dozen gaming sites that had the appropriate licenses and were therefore within the legal field, but the thirst for profit forced Maks Polyakov to go further. He founded a network of online casinos under the general name "Vulkan" ─ already completely illegal. They did not have licenses, they used pirated copies of gaming programs "Novomatic", "Net Ent", and "Playtech". Krippa’s programmers skillfully built into their algorithms aimed at the mandatory complete ruin of the client. The sites were elusive. They regularly changed addresses, and their fictitious owners hid in distant offshores, protecting themselves and the real owners from searches and prosecution.
In a short time, Maks Polyakov and Krippa have produced one hundred and fifty clones, united by one common root in the title “Vulkan”.
Having felt the success with "Vulkan", Krippa and Polyakov expanded their activities, launching several more large-scale projects, including "CasinoX" and "JoyCasino". These projects developed due to aggressive marketing, which Polyakov had already used when promoting dating resources. As a result, we all know that «Batman» told the «Joker» how to solve problems with access to "JoyCasino" at the final battle time. However, not only Batman. Aggressive advertising led to many memes on the Internet, which further contributed to the development of Krippa and Polyakov’s gambling resources.
The fake list of "Samopomich" and Maksym Krippa’s "Samopomich" infiltration
Among legal projects, Maksym Krippa tried to get a license for the Champion-lottery.com Internet lottery. Here he had to negotiate with politicians and find their support for the initiative. That’s when the first thought of his own political career flashed through his mind. The first and so far only pancake turned out lumpy.
The businessman ran for the Kyiv City Council from the "Samopomich" party. He lost the election but managed to earn a good amount of money. Maksym Krippa created an alternative party list and began selling places on this list. Dozens of Ukrainian businessmen fell for the scam. When the scam was revealed and the heat was on, Krippa left for Russia and kept a low profile temporarily. This is what representatives of the "Samopomich" party, which found itself embroiled in a major scandal, had to say about it:
"We were surprised to learn that Maksym Krippa was selling seats in the next elections on behalf of the "Samopomich" association. The most striking thing in this story is the complete lack of adequacy of the people who managed to pay "fees" to get on the list for the next parliamentary elections, which no one had even compiled yet. After law enforcement officials contacted the party, we have been unsuccessfully trying to contact a former member of our political force M. Krippa."
How the scandal and the fraud case were hushed up remains a mystery. But soon after, Krippa returned to Ukraine and continued to gamble unhindered. He was involved into several criminal cases related to the gambling business, but time after time he came out unscathed.
It is not excluded that Maksym Krippa and Maksym Polyakov worked on other political projects. And not only in Ukraine. This is evidenced by the impunity of IT businessmen and the huge opportunities that, despite legislative prohibitions, became available to the tandem in the field of online gambling in Ukraine, Russia, and other countries.
Why did Maksym Krippa rush into politics, and Maksym Polyakov show Kuchma a rubber rocket?
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Neither Maksym Krippa nor Polyakov have created independent political projects. However, politics, especially in Ukraine, is of interest to one of Krippa’s key long-term partners, Russian oligarkh Konstantin Malofeev. For a long time, Maksym Krippa worked as Malofeev’s manager and promoted his projects in Ukraine. It was Malofeev, who helped his CEO partially bypass gambling bans in the Russian Federation. Maksym Krippa’s online casinos and those of his namesake Polyakov are blocked by Roskomnadzor but are freely available to "Rostelecom". Even Malofeev finds it difficult to influence Roskomnadzor. But things are different with the country’s largest internet provider. From 2010 to 2013, Konstantin Malofeev was the company’s largest minority shareholder - he owned 7.22% of "Rostelecom" shares.
The oligarkh managed to put his manager Aleksander Provotorov at the head of the company. Through him, Malofeev could make any changes to the list of sites blocked by the provider. It was then that "Vulkan", "CasinoX" and "JoyCasino" of Maksym Krippa and Maks Polyakov began to disappear from the list of blocked sites. The price for the oligarkh’s help was a part of the "EvoPlay" company and certain services in the political sphere. In March 2017, "Rostelecom" PJSC was headed by the former deputy head of the Ministry of Economic Development and former vice-governor of St. Petersburg Mikhail Oseevsky.
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