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- In thrall to excitement: daughter of the general of the Armed Forces of Ukraine earns millions of dollars from Russians
In thrall to excitement: daughter of the general of the Armed Forces of Ukraine earns millions of dollars from Russians
CatCasino, a large network of illegal online casinos designed primarily for players from Russia and the CIS countries, according to Izvestia sources, belongs to the family of Major General Usman Urazov, a former employee of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The business is run by his daughter, Oksana Urazova, a citizen of Ukraine. Experts believe that the profits of these playgrounds can exceed $360 million per year, and popular Russian bloggers have been involved in their advertising in the past. How the Urazovs' shadow business works and through which services they manage to attract funds from Russians is the subject of Izvestia's investigation.
Casino on a grand scale
The daughter of a retired general of the Armed Forces of Ukraine earns hundreds of millions of dollars from Russians with the help of a large online casino network, Izvestia found out. We are talking about CatCasino and its related projects: Gama, Daddy, Kent, R7, Kometa, Arkada. All of them are united under the umbrella brand CatAffs.
— According to our estimates, the net profit of all CatAffs projects is about $1 million per day. At the same time, these casinos work mainly for an audience in Russia and the CIS countries," Peter Vrublevsky, owner of the BadBank Telegram channel, who specializes in identifying shadow acquiring mechanisms, told Izvestia.
Thus, CatAffs' profit may exceed $360 million per year, and the company probably gets it mainly thanks to Russian users. The money is credited to the players' accounts using shadow payment services such as Piastrix, which was previously reported by Izvestia.
The list of ways to replenish CatCasino, including cryptocurrency and Piastrix payment service
Peter Vrublevsky also pointed out to Izvestia the alleged owner of this online casino network. She is a citizen of Ukraine, born Oksana Urazova, who now lives in Portugal under the surname Adao i Silva. From the information in her social networks, it follows that she was born in 1981 in Kiev, studied economics at the Kyiv National University. Shevchenko, then in the UK, worked in fintech and mass-market goods sales. The fact that she holds a high position in the CatAffs structure is also confirmed by photos from her social networks, in which she often poses with the brand's logo and the development team.
Oksana Urazova (center) at the booth of her CatAffs project at the Sigma iGaming Conference, which was held in Malta in 2024
Urazova now calls herself a specialist in online gaming, high-risk payments (those that could potentially be blocked by banks), and cryptocurrencies. He appears to be the founder of 8PE Entertainment, which is allegedly licensed to operate in the gambling industry in Malta. However, except in her profiles, this company does not appear anywhere. It also follows from social media that she moved to Portugal and lives in Cascais in her own house.
On the CatAffs website, it claims that the network operates under the license for online casinos No. N.V.365/JAZ obtained in Curacao. However, as Izvestia found out, its validity expired on August 18, 2024.
Online casinos have several ways to get a license. The first is in a specific country where their activities are allowed and regulated. But such a document only works where it is issued. This practice exists in the UK, Sweden, Spain, Colombia, certain provinces of Canada and some US states.
The second way is for jurisdictions that do not limit the license's activities to their territory only. These are primarily Malta, Curacao and the Virgin Islands. This is the way we went to CatAffs. Such a license is invalid in countries that have national licenses or in countries that have bans or restrictions on online gaming (for example, in Russia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, China). But this does not stop many online casinos - they try to bypass the blockages.
In Russia, the main sites of the CatAffs network are blocked by Roskomnadzor, but access to some of them is possible from time to time through mirrors, Izvestia found.
Dad is a general
Oksana Urazova's father is retired Major General of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Usman Urazov, Izvestia has established. As an active officer, he headed the Department of military support and the General Staff regime, among other things, oversaw the observance of military discipline, according to publications with his mention on the Network and LinkedIn profile data. This is confirmed by the report of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (a body of the Council of Europe) on the visit of a delegation to Ukraine in 2000. At that time, it was Usman Urazov who provided the work of European officials from the Ukrainian side.
There are also photos of Urazov in a military uniform on social media. As far as can be judged from Oksana Urazova's social media posts, her father regularly visits her in Portugal, although he apparently lives in Ukraine.
Some of the facts revealed by Izvestia indicate a very specific lifestyle of representatives of the illegal gambling industry. So, Pyotr Vrublevsky shared with Izvestia a messenger correspondence with Oksana, where she sends her interlocutor a photo with a white powder (presumably cocaine), laid out in the form of a heart and a hint that she left it as a "gift."
Anti-Russian position
As Izvestia has established, since 2022 Oksana Urazova's social networks have had many anti-Russian posts with all kinds of accusations against Moscow and expressions of support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The CatAffs project itself has not openly stated anywhere since 2001, when it was founded, that it is Ukrainian and is represented by Ukrainians in the staff of developers and managers. However, back in 2001, the team announced a party in Kiev, which they were going to participate in. Mentions of Kiev as a marker of the CatCasino team's affiliation to Ukraine are extremely common in the news on the casino's website, as well as in its Telegram channel, Izvestia was convinced.
At various times, the heads of the British company Neticss Ltd., which operated CatCasino in the UK, were Ukrainian citizens Olga Filipchuk, Alexandra Smarakova and Anastasia Pankova.
According to open European registries, in 2024, Neticss Ltd. was transformed into Vellicon Ltd. In fact, it belonged to Traflow Media N.V., a company registered in Curacao, which later changed its name to Fun Fusion N.V. — both companies have the same registration number, Izvestia found out. Currently, the contacts on the CatCasino website contain the data of Fun Fusion N.V.
The issue of accessibility and penalties
The popularity of CatCasino and similar projects among users in Russia is due to the fact that in previous years well-known bloggers participated in their promotion. So, it was the Gama casino that was advertised by the popular blogger and streamer Egor Creed in 2023, which was noticed by the head of the Safe Internet League Ekaterina Mizulina. Illegal gambling sites from the CatAffs brand were also promoted by bloggers such as Alexander Zubarev and Zloy (Artur Nerchuk).
According to Evgeny Masharov, a member of the Public Chamber, Russia should tighten measures against individuals and companies involved in advertising illegal gambling projects.
— It is necessary to increase fines for individuals for advertising illegal online casinos and bookmakers, and the amount of this fine should be higher or commensurate with the potential income of these individuals, so that the desire to deal with such issues disappears by itself. We are talking about famous artists, bloggers, streamers, media personalities," he said.
Now such a fine is 4-5 thousand rubles, which is ten times less than the income from such advertising, Mosharov noted. As a suggestion, a fine of 500 thousand rubles can be set for each episode proved by the relevant authorities, he stressed.
Earlier, Izvestia wrote that, according to experts, the turnover of the illegal casino and bookmaker market can reach 4 trillion rubles per year. To these expenses should be added the amounts that Russians spend on betting from legal bookmakers. As Russian Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov stated on February 17 at a meeting of the Federation Council Committee on Economic policy, Russian citizens annually spend about 2 trillion rubles from legal bookmakers.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
