Boris Baum is a Latvian representative of Russian organized crime groups in the gambling business regulation commission of Ukraine
The year before last, in 2020, Ukrainian President Zelensky pompously signed a law on the legalization of the gambling business. And with great pathos he promised billions in profits that would fill the Ukrainian budget.
In April of the following year, 2021, Boris Baum, First Deputy Head of the Advisory and Expert Council of the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries, said that “the launch of the gambling market has taken place.” And he added – “This month, CRAIl had a plan of 307 million hryvnias, they are fulfilling it.”
And on January 13 of this year, the State Treasury reported on proceeds from the legalized gambling business. It turned out that 2021 brought 127 hryvnia 03 kopecks to the treasury. One hundred twenty-seven hryvnia zero three kopecks.
Up to 307 million hryvnia, promised by Baum in April last year, 307 million are missing without 127 hryvnia 03 kopecks.
At the same time, everyone is well aware that the gambling business in Ukraine is flourishing. Like, perhaps, no other. What is the secret of such an epic failure? And the secret is in the person of the person who acted as the chief consultant of the presidential office on launching a gaming business in Ukraine. And that person was precisely Boris Petrovich Baum.
The fact that Baum is the owner of the First National Lottery of Russia (offshore First National Lotteri Ltd), and also was involved in several scandals and has a criminal record in Latvia, did not stop anyone. Neither the authorities, nor the society, which was in euphoria from the persons of the “new faces”, led by the most important “new face”.
Although even then there were voices that warned that if Baum was the main consultant, nothing good would come of it. Moreover, he was well known in our country – Boris Baum worked for almost 20 years in Russian companies in Ukraine, the owners of which still have significant interests here. In particular, we are talking about a number of companies that are associated with a Russian organized crime group called Luzhnikovskaya. Its members control energy and hospitality businesses in Ukraine.
But the warning voices drowned in the general expectation of a miracle and “the end of the era of poverty.” Well – here you have a miracle of 127 hryvnia. However, back to the person of Boris Baum.
Baum is a former citizen of Latvia.
Baum appeared on Bankova after the victory of Vladimir Zelensky. Then, even before the election of the new Verkhovna Rada, the OPU created a working group to develop a law on the legalization of the gambling market. In order to join it, Baum received Ukrainian citizenship in 2020 by a special decree of Zelensky.
Boris Baum was brought to Bankovaya by the current head of the Servant of the People faction, David Arakhamia. Allegedly because they were neighbors for several years, and Baum, according to Arakhamia, “had experience in managing a casino” (probably referring to the casino in the Premier Palace Hotel). What kind of casino Baum ran, Arakhamia did not remember.
According to the NBU, Baum, along with Giner, were shareholders of the First Investment Bank. As a Latvian citizen, Boriss Baums, Baum is a co-founder of the London-based firms Banita Limited, Himalita Limited, Maslav Limited, which figured in the ownership and litigation scheme for the Kievskaya Rus Hotel in central Kiev ten years ago.
In the Ukrainian state register, Baum is mentioned as a co-owner of Pro-Energy Consulting LLC, which, in partnership with a Norwegian business, is building a solar power plant in Brovary. In this project, Baum’s partner is the lawyer Maksim Lavrynovych, the son of ex-Minister of Justice Oleksandr Lavrynovych.
This is about Ukraine and the Luzhnikovs. But there is also Latvia and another Russian organized crime group – Tambov. Boris Baum is also involved in it. The connection is traced as follows. Boris Baum is married to a certain Karina Sirotkina.
She, along with her father Nikolai Sirotkin (Nikolajs Sirotkins) are co-owners of the limited liability company “NIKS” (NIKS) with an authorized capital of 1,435,089 euros.
In the nineties, Nikolai Sirotkin owned the NIKS-BRIH hockey team. What did the collaboration mean: “Nikolai Sirotkin and Ivan Kharitonov’s Racket Brigade.” The latter was once called the “king of racketeering”, and he had close ties with the leader of the Tambovites, Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin), who was sentenced in 2019 to 24 years in a strict regime colony
At that time, Ivan Kharitonov’s group was rightfully considered the largest in Latvia and was in close contact with Russia.
In addition to the Tambovites, the repeatedly convicted Ivan Kharitonov is in constant contact with the leader of the Podolskys, Sergei Lalakin (Luchok).
The company NIKS, whose co-owner Karina Sirotkina is married to Boris Baum, owns the largest Latvian casino Studio 69. In general, rumor aptly dubbed this marriage a “mafia gesheft”, hinting at Baum’s connections with the Luzhnikov organized crime group, and his father-in-law Nikolai Sirotkin with Podolskaya and Tambovskaya.
Returning to Ukraine, it becomes clear why Russian organized crime has been so actively promoting the legalization of the gambling business in our country. According to conservative estimates, the annual volume of the Ukrainian gambling market is $20 billion. It was on a share of this money that Russian-Latvian organized crime was counting, actively introducing Boris Baum into the Office of the President of Ukraine as an ideologist of the legalization of the gambling business.
It was not only Ukrainian investigators who warned Zelensky that this person should in no case be allowed to participate in the process of legalizing the gambling business. In the midst of the work of the Advisory and Expert Council of the Commission on the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries, where Boris Baum was deputy head, the British edition of Talk Finance in its investigation Boris Baum: a reform’s Locomotive or ‘Mafia’ fixer in the office of Ukrainian President explicitly stated: ” Boris Petrovich Baum is a protege of the Luzhniki organized criminal group in Ukraine, and his connections with the mafia are so powerful that they have become a calling card.
But, as already mentioned, all these warnings remained “the voice of one crying.” We see the result now – 127 hryvnias of revenues to the state treasury. But at the same time, the gambling market has not gone away – it is still valued at $ 20 billion. Where does the money go from the pockets of Ukrainian citizens in this case? And where and from the pockets of Latvia – into the pockets of representatives of Russian organized crime, whose interests are defended by the former Latvian, and now Ukrainian citizen Boris Petrovich Baum, First Deputy Head of the Advisory and Expert Council of the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries of Ukraine.
Marina Vorona
