In Russia, as in Ukraine, online gambling is officially prohibited. But some providers are selective about this ban. One of them is Rostelecom.

The provider provides access to gambling sites Vulcan, CasinoX and Joycasino, prohibited by Roskomnadzor. True, not for everyone. “Volcanoes” opened from the IP provider Rostelecom belong to one person - a Ukrainian businessman and a candidate for the Kiev council from the Samopomich party, Maxim Krippa. How was a Ukrainian entrepreneur able to influence the Russian Internet giant and circumvent the Roskomnadzor ban?

Two Max

Maxim Krippa has been involved in the gambling business in Ukraine for a long time; IT companies EvoPlay and Clone Fish are associated with him. Krippa’s partner in the gambling business was an American businessman with Ukrainian roots, Max Polyakov, who made a fortune in dating and erotic web chats in Dnieper and Zaporozhye.

In the early 2010s, Polyakov and Krippa decided to expand their gambling assets and opened a joint business in the field of online casinos. The office of the joint company is located in the capital of Ukraine – Kyiv.

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The most successful acquisition of the Krippa-Polyakov group was the Vulcan and Vulkan slot machine brands. EvoPlay acquired exclusive rights to use the product under these names from Ritzio. All online casinos that previously operated under the Vulcan label have been successfully closed by EvoPlay.

When EvoPlay dealt with the last competitors who worked under the Vulcan brand, Krippa and Polyakov began to develop gambling resources under this name themselves.

New “Volcanoes” began to appear in batches. Every day, a dozen similar gambling resources with identical design and set of games are launched. Most of them have software products from EvoPlay.

Brand owners personally churn out sites in huge volumes without indicating the owners or registration information. Thus, businessmen had the opportunity to earn money in markets where online gambling is prohibited. Neither Krippa nor Polyakov are risking anything. Neither complaints nor courts can reach the real owners and prove their involvement in anonymous sites. The system works like the heads of a hydra. When one site is blocked, 10 clones appear with similar addresses and identical patterns.

Having felt success with Vulcans, Krippa and Polyakov expanded their activities by 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 time of the final battle. However, not only Batman. Aggressive advertising led to many memes on the Internet, which further contributed to the development of gambling resources for Krippa and Polyakov.

Fake “Self-Help” list from Maxim Krippa

In parallel with his work on the online casino, Maxim Krippa, with the support of Polyakov, decided to break into big politics. The businessman ran for the Kyiv City Council from the Samopomich party. He lost the elections, but managed to make good money. Maxim 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 smell of frying began, Krippa left for Russia and hid for a while. Here’s what representatives of the Samopomich party, which was embroiled in a major scandal, said about it:

“We were surprised to learn that Maxim 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 representatives of law enforcement agencies contacted the party, we are 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 this, Krippa returned to Ukraine again and continues to engage in gambling unhindered. He was involved in several criminal cases related to the gambling business, but time after time he got away with it.

It is possible that Maxim Krippa and Max Polyakov worked with other political projects. Moreover, not only in Ukraine. This is evidenced by the impunity of IT businessmen and the enormous opportunities that, despite legislative prohibitions, have become available to the tandem in the field of online gambling in Ukraine, Russia and other countries.

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Maxim Krippa - CEO Malofeev

Neither Krippa nor Polyakov were ever involved in politics on their own. Politics, especially in Ukraine, interests one of Crippa’s key long-term partners, Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

For a long time, Maxim Krippa worked as a manager for Malofeev and promoted his projects in Ukraine. It was Malofeev who helped his CEO partially circumvent gambling prohibitions in the Russian Federation. The online casinos of Maxim Krippa and his namesake Polyakov are blocked by Roskomnadzor, but are freely accessible by Rostelecom. It’s difficult even for Malofeev to influence Roskomnadzor. But with the country’s largest Internet provider, things are different.

From 2010 to 2013, Konstantin Malofeev was the largest minority shareholder of the company - he owned 7.22% of Rostelecom shares. The oligarch managed to put his manager Alexander Provotorov at the head of the company. Through it, Malofeev could make any changes to the list of sites blocked by the provider. It was then that Vulcans, CasinoX and JoyCasino by Maxim Krippa and Max Polyakov began to disappear from the list of blocked sites. The price for the oligarch’s help was a part of the EvoPlay company and certain services in the political sphere.

Judging by the fact that Vulcans and other gambling sites of Krippa-Polyakov are still available on the network of the Rostelecom provider, cooperation with the Russian oligarch continues successfully. But what is the price of this cooperation today?