Amendments to the laws on state regulation of gambling and on the “Unified Gambling Regulator” may soon be adopted. Behind the “good intentions” to control the market may be the interests of Umar Kremlev and his “friends”.
Lobbying continues for a bill to expand the powers of the Unified Gambling Regulator (ERAI). How did the correspondent find out? The Moscow Postthis may be lobbying for the interests of the President of the International Boxing Federation, the former General Secretary of the Russian Boxing Federation, Umar Kremlev.
What is “salt”
Since September 2021, ERAI has been tracking all bets and target deductions of bookmakers. The new draft amendments proposed by United Russia deputies (Sergey Altukhov, Andrey Alshevskikh and Adalbi Shkhagoshev) propose that he also be given the opportunity to control the sale of lottery tickets, bets in casinos and earmarked deductions from lottery and casino operators.
All targeted deductions from lotteries and casinos are supposed to be withheld through the Unified Center for Accounting Transfers of Rates (Unified TsUPIS). If you delve into the topic, it becomes obvious that they want to oblige all participants in the lottery market to pay a special fee from each lottery in the interests of specific people.
The initiative is presented under the guise of the most good deed – supposedly all this will help to better control the market, not to lose billions of rubles, which now, the lawmakers say, are “leaking” into the pockets of dubious entrepreneurs.
And such an effect, of course, should be expected when the screws are tightened, although there is an opinion that virtually all the necessary goals from this position can already be achieved with the current powers of the regulator.
Only now, instead of hundreds of “dishonest entrepreneurs,” the only honest one can become the recipient of these millions. We are talking about Umar Kremlev. It is his interests that can stand behind the whole scheme – this is eloquently evidenced by the ownership structure of the state ERAI.
Kremlin “gingerbread”
The fact is that, according to the authors of the site CNews, allegedly literally in September last year, one of the state-owned banks and Umar Kremlev’s Boxing Progress Center became co-owners of Modern Payment Solutions (SPR) and Mobile Card companies. The Kremlin received a majority stake in the SPR. It is these two organizations that finance the activities of ERAI and carry out the functions of the Unified TSUPIS.
If we now look at the composition of the founders of “Mobile Card”, we will see that SPR owns 90% of the company in general. True, the share is under the burden of one of the state banks …
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Kremlev promoted the idea of such a reformation of the betting market back in 2020, as reported by “Kommersant”. As we can see, the former head of the Boxing Federation quickly achieved what he wanted.
True, a businessman may try to hide these connections. Until June 2017, the Cypriot offshore “ITISI CONSULTS (CYPRUS) LTD” was in the structure of the founders of Maksimikha LLC, which was associated with the SPR, which in May 2021 withdrew from the founders of the office. It is designed for Andrey Goncharov, a native of the Kremlin structures.
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Until mid-2021, he worked at Sports Lotteries LLC, the operator of the National Sports Lottery, a joint project of the Russian Boxing Federation and the Liga Stavok betting company, as well as at Sport and Fatherland LLC, an organization founded by the Boxing Progress Center “(Until 2021, Umar Kremlev personally supervised her).
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Thus, Kremlev, who a couple of years ago actively promoted the idea of state regulation, now allegedly stepped aside from all this. In fact, he simply made a small reshuffle – having nominally left the offices, he put his people in senior positions of regulators, and he himself “came” from the other side.
Now Goncharov is the general director of ERAI. So everything again converges on the Kremlin, which, according to journalists MorningNewsjust last month, he re-registered the operator of the all-Russian state lotteries LLC “Sports Lotteries”.
Is this a clear conflict of interest? Because the control of financial flows and the collection of fees from participants in the lottery market will be a structure that, by all indications, is associated with the same person. But for some reason this does not bother anyone …
Thus, in fact, the adoption of the new amendments to the law proposed by United Russia will become a kind of final chord in the “crushing” of the lottery market under one “roof”.
According to the authors of the telegram channel “Nezygar”, allegedly the co-owners of the ETsUPS have already tested the operation of this scheme on the betting market. And they liked the result – in 2021, the profit of the Mobile Card NPO due to commissions from betting companies amounted to about 7.0 billion. And for 2022, a profit of 18.0 billion rubles is expected.
Kremlin and his friends
Speaking of “Sports Lotteries”. In October 2019, the composition of the founders changed in the organization. Among its members was Magomedrasul Hajiyev’s “Estate in Kadashi”. According to rumors, this is the brother of the State Duma deputy from the Republic of Dagestan Magomed Gadzhiev. Here is another possible interest and protégé.
But maybe you shouldn’t be so afraid of what is happening? Perhaps Umar Kremlev is a person who can be trusted? What do we know about him. Not so much. Over the past couple of years, many publications have disappeared that contained any information about the businessman’s past.
Nevertheless, information was preserved in open sources that until 2007 he allegedly bore the surname Lutfulloev, which he managed to glorify with several criminal cases and received suspended sentences – wrote about this “Version”. However, we were unable to officially confirm this information.
Many of the companies that Kremlev managed or owned in one way or another have been liquidated at a loss or have negative profits. Some of them received large government contracts.
Photo: https://www.rusprofile.ru
Photo: https://www.rusprofile.ru
Photo: https://www.rusprofile.ru
The Kremlin also has business with Ekaterina Gordon (a famous TV presenter, or her full namesake). Together they own LLC Legal Protection of Sports. Financial indicators, as in many other offices associated with the Kremlin, are not disclosed. And money from the same government contracts from other offices of the Kremlin can at the same time flow offshore.
In 2013, already in the Kremlin, he founded the Patriot company and began organizing boxing matches. At the same time, he joined the Night Wolves motorcycle club, from which he soon left, as they say, due to the fact that he was not at all favored there – perhaps because of a criminal past.
It is also possible that it was there that he met the head of the Security Service of the President of the Russian Federation, Alexei Rubezhny. In 2017, he appointed Kremlev head of the Russian Boxing Federation. Well, and then the described and other “business projects” of the Kremlin began.
Connections with the highest echelons of power can also be traced through the already mentioned “Boxing Progress Center” several times. Denis Medvedev, a member of the Supreme Supervisory Board of the Russian Boxing Federation, worked there at one time. Timur Prokopenko, Deputy Head of the Department for Domestic Policy of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, also works with him. Have they diverged from the Kremlin path?
Judging by the current state of affairs, it is unlikely. And the “subjugation” of the market of lotteries and bookmakers under one regulator, which, as we found out, cannot be called reliable, is only a matter of time.
Source:The Moscow Post