Legalization of Pari-Match income through shell companies and terrorism financing: banker Alena Degrik-Shevtsova erases traces of Ibox Bank schemes online

The assets of Alena Shevtsova, whose company previously appeared in corruption investigations by the Prosecutor General’s Office, are being re-registered to third parties, which may indicate an attempt to protect the property from potential claims.

Back in 2017, the country’s largest online casino operating under the Pari-Match brand came under suspicion from law enforcement authorities. With the support of the Security Service of Ukraine, the Prosecutor General’s Office registered criminal proceedings in October 2017 under number 42017000000002925.

The case involved dozens of individuals and legal entities who were in one way or another connected to Pari-Match and directly participated in the casino’s operations, serviced accounts, helped accept bets, and cash out money. “The total volume of income legalized by the perpetrators and obtained through criminal means amounts to about 350 million US dollars per year,” investigators from the Prosecutor General’s Office concluded.

Alena Shevtsova (Degrik) is the founder and CEO of FC “Leogaming Pay,” which also appears in the materials of the criminal proceedings. In narrower circles, she is known as the former common-law wife of Roman Nasirov, with whom she previously worked at Concorde Capital. In fact, the company “Leogaming” was named after their son Lev. Currently, Alena Shevtsova is married to Yevhen Shevtsov.

Yevhen Shevtsov is the head of one of the departments of the National Police. Before that, in 2016–2017, he worked as commercial director of the company “Financial Company” Leogaming Pay.

At the beginning of August, Degrik withdrew from the list of founders of LLC “Leogaming.” The company immediately changed its name to “iGame,” changed its registration address (moving from Kyiv to Kharkiv), and is now owned, through the Bila Tserkva-based LLC “Trans Trade Group,” by two individuals with signs of fictitious status — Oleksandr Komlyk, a resident of the village of Andriyashivka in Sumy region, and Volodymyr Tymoshchuk from the village of Velyka Snytynka in Kyiv region.

The new director of the renamed “Leogaming” became Petro Valeriyovych Zhalnin. A person with this full name and taxpayer identification number has appeared in many companies, including “AMI-Spetstekhnika,” “Novye Tekhnologii Plus,” and others.

More noteworthy is the fact that this person is listed in the Myrotvorets database as a militant of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. On Petro Zhalnin’s VKontakte page, the former website of “Novye Tekhnologii Plus” is mentioned; he boasts of having a DPR “passport” and posts photos in military uniform with a rifle, as well as a 2015 photo from Red Square in Moscow.

How company management could be registered to a DPR militant who is reportedly wanted and has not left territory not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities remains an open question.

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In court materials concerning Alena Shevtsova’s companies, the Security Service of Ukraine noted that they were financing militants in eastern Ukraine.

However, as media previously reported, Deputy Minister of Justice Natalia Bernatska is a member of the external competition commission of the State Bureau of Investigations. She twice voted in favor of appointing Yevhen Shevtsov to the SBI. With such connections in the Ministry of Justice, transferring companies to a DPR militant would not be a problem. It is also worth noting that Alena Shevtsova (Degrik) is the godmother and close friend of Tetiana Smolii, the daughter of former National Bank head Yakiv Smolii.