Max Krippa, a Ukrainian businessman and owner of the NaVi team, has stepped up his real estate activities in Ukraine, despite the martial law in the country.
After the acquisition of the Dnipro Hotel for the creation of a casino for UAH 1.111 billion, received through refinancing from the National Bank to the banks RVS and Sich, Krippa made significant investments in real estate in the Kyiv region.
On January 16, at an auction, Krippa’s company, Mydal LLC, offered UAH 311.11 million for more than 10 real estate objects that were pledged to the nationalized Prominvestbank. Among the acquired objects are a recreation center in Koncha-Zaspa and mansions in Kozyn.
Krippa, who started his career in the field of gaming, showed ambitions by acquiring the Parus business center. This object, which was previously owned by developer Vadim Stolar, is trying to avoid potential confiscation. Stolar had previously filed for divorce from his wife Inna Maistruk, who owned 20% of Parus through the Stream Invest fund.
Now the majority stake in Parus Holding LLC is registered in the name of Ola Fine LLC, owned by Crippy through the ARS Capital investment fund. These moves indicate Krippa’s significant confidence in his business plans in the Ukrainian real estate market.
Earlier it was also reported that Ukraine continues to be active in the field of esports, especially the management of online casinos. In April 2021, the Commission for Regulation of the Gambling and Lotteries Market (CRGL) granted a license to open the Vulkan online casino, which is owned by Competition LLC. This company, whose name translates as "conqueror", was an enigmatic participant in the market, because its true owners remained unknown.
According to the analytical service YouControl, 99.9% of Competition LLC belongs to Darlox Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, and the remaining 0.1% belongs to Stanislav Rudenko, a resident of Nizhyn, Chernihiv region. The main owner company, located in an offshore zone, remains mysterious in its activities, although it is known to be a shareholder of GLOBAL INNOVATIONS HOLDING LIMITED, registered in Malta in 2013.
In 2022, Competition LLC earned UAH 29.7 million, while the company’s annual license fee, according to CRGL, is UAH 23.4 million. This is a rather modest result, given the need to pay winnings to players, but the businessman, apparently, does not intend to stop his activities. According to Forbes-Ukraine, the owner of Competition LLC also owns another online casino in Ukraine – GGBet, GGBet LLC. As in the case of Competition, GGBet is 99.9% owned by another offshore company, this time from Cyprus, Teracid LTD.
Other sources claim that Competition LLC also has a "Cypriot footprint" as it was once owned by Cypriot citizen Theodoros Theodore through Darlox Limited. According to Forbes-Ukraine, the connection between these companies can be traced not only in their Cypriot past, but also in the fact that both use the Vulkan brand. According to the GGBet website, the owners are Brivio Limited, a company registered in Cyprus, and Invicta Networks N.V., a company registered on the island of Curacao.
The license of this island is used by many Ukrainian online casinos. Forbes-Ukraine claims that both companies use the Vulkan Vegas brand to provide services, and the owner of the Vulkan brand in Ukraine is businessman Maxim Krippa.
Maxim Vladimirovich Krippa, Ukrainian businessman, interested journalists in his important business operations. Attention was drawn to it by the purchase in the summer of 2020 of the Kyiv Dnipro Hotel for a record amount of UAH 1.1 billion by Smartland, the identity of the owners of which was unknown at the time.
The high price of the deal was due to the legalization of the gaming market in Ukraine and plans to place slot machines and casinos in hotels. The official party to the deal was Oleksandr Kokhanovskyi, the organizer of esports competitions in Ukraine and the owner of the NAVI trademark.
Subsequently, it turned out that Smartland, which acquired Dnipro, was registered at the address owned by Maksym Krippy, which gave reason to assume his possible participation in the case together with Kokhanovsky. In September 2022, Forbes-Ukraine revealed that Krippa had acquired the esports brand NAVI, which was previously owned by Kokhanovsky. It is interesting that Ukrainian company operating under this brand - Navi UA LLC, as well as Competition LLC, the owner of Vulkan TM, were registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Another step of Crippa in the esports space of Ukraine took place in March 2023, when he acquired the Maincast studio, which owned the monopoly rights to broadcast the largest esports competitions in the CIS.
According to Forbes-Ukraine, the company’s profitability was not impressive, but quite decent - more than 0.5 million euros in 2012. At the same time, Navi Yoo earned a little more than 4 million hryvnias a year.
The question of where Maksym Krippa got the funds to purchase the Dnipro Hotel for UAH 1.1 billion, create an online casino and his other financial transactions is still open. These incomes have not been explained. However, criminal proceedings No. 220150000000000379, which was considered in 2017 by the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv, may indicate the direction where to look for answers: a group of people whom the investigation did not identify, using about 20 different commercial structures, creating a number of websites and online casinos, actively made money on the Internet on players’ bets.
The investigation asked the court to grant permission for searches at several addresses, and these motions were partially supported. However, much more interesting is the fact that the list of companies suspected of running an illegal gambling business in 2017 mentions two companies of Maksym Krippa – Jaguar Club LLC and Brovary Wholesale Market. In Jaguar, Maksym Crippa owns 33.33%, while he controlled 99.8% of the Brovary Wholesale Market.
Engaging in the gaming business without paying taxes and license fees could explain where Maksym Kryppa got the funds for expensive acquisitions. For example, in January 2023, another company of the businessman, Mydal LLC, purchased luxury real estate in the village of Kozyn near Kyiv for UAH 311 million.
The main question remains: how did Maxim Krippa learn to run a gaming business and get such large profits from it, enough for purchases worth hundreds of millions of hryvnias. It is interesting to note Forbes-Ukraine’s remarks about the coordinated activities of Maksym Kryppa to remove from the public space references to his connection with the betting brand Vulkanbet.
According to the information on the company’s website, Vulkanbet has been operating on the market since 2015, in 2019 it received a license from CUPIS, and the legal bookmaker uses QIWI-Bank to deposit and withdraw funds. It is important that, despite the vulkanbet com ua domain, the business is Russian in nature, since CUPIS is a transfer and rate accounting center available in Russia, and Qiwi Bank is registered in Moscow.
TM Vulkan casinos first appeared in Russia and were associated with the Ritzio International company of Russian businessman Oleg Boyko. Its structures operated in many countries of the CIS and Eastern Europe under the brands "Vulkan", "Million", "Metro-Jackpot", "King", Labirints and City Casino. The Ukrainian product of the company was the casinos of the Metro-Jackpot network, which defaulted in 2009.
