People’s Deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak, engaged in the gambling market, works in the interests of the Russian 1xBet
The imposition of sanctions on the largest Ukrainian gambling company Parimatch was due to the efforts of the People’s Deputy of Ukraine Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who agreed to cooperate in this matter with the Russians from the scandalous 1xBet bookmaker, writes narodna-pravda.
As you know, on March 10, 2022, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky put into effect solution of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine to impose sanctions on a number of Russian and Russian-based gambling companies, the list of which, unexpectedly for many market participants, included the well-known Ukrainian company Parimatch, which left the market of the aggressor country immediately after the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This decision political scientist Taras Zagorodniy named “surprising to say the least.” “I am by no means a fan of this type of business, but here they punished a company that a year ago completely left the Russian market and banned the use of its brand there (I remind you that Raiffeisen Bank, METRO, Auchan and many others also operate in Ukraine continue to operate in Russia ). The company has a clear pro-Ukrainian position, condemnation of Russia’s actions, assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine for more than UAH 500 million“, – said Zagorodny.
Together with him, many other experts also emphasize that if the issue of sanctions on the majority of truly pro-Russian companies included in the list was discussed for a long time and systematically, then Parimatch got into it very abruptly and unexpectedly.
“Before being included in the NSDC sanctions lists, Parimatch LLC was not asked for any explanations. To date, it is not clear how a respectable business got into the sanctions lists. Probably, the National Security Council and the President of Ukraine were misled and misinformed by interested parties“, – says in petitions in support of Parimatch on the website of the President of Ukraine.
Information about who these interested parties may be has already entered the public plane. As Forbes wrote, Parimatch fell under sanctions not without the help of the Russian betting company 1xBet, which in the spring of 2022, at the height of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, received two licenses from CRAIL to work in Ukraine at once.
How explained Borys Davidenko, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian Forbes, Boris Davidenko, Parimatch made a lot of efforts to prevent the Russian bookmaker 1xBet from entering the Ukrainian market, for which the latter retaliated by getting Parimatch included in the NSDC sanctions list.
“Parimatch launched a whole campaign in the summer to prevent 1xBet from entering Ukraine, now the X’s have spared no resources to motivate the SBU to create problems for Parimatch”, — declared Forbes interlocutor from the Main Directorate of Intelligence.
According to him, Zelensky was easily sold the idea of these sanctions, telling the story that the Ukrainian military loses a total of billions of hryvnia per month and a significant proportion of this money goes to Russia.
Obviously, someone from high-ranking Ukrainian officials had to help convince the president and the National Security and Defense Council to remove the Russians from 1xBet from the Parimatch market. As it turned out, this person was Yaroslav Zheleznyak, People’s Deputy of Ukraine, who takes an active position in the gambling business. He is the head of the interim commission of inquiry of the Verkhovna Rada on gambling business, and it is he who is called the person who at the last moment “added” Parimatch to the sanctions list among pro-Russian companies. It is noteworthy that the issue of imposing sanctions on 1xBet itself dragged on for the entire last year, and the people’s deputy Zheleznyak himself “pulled” it for many months, commenting to journalists that sanctions were about to be imposed, but this did not happen. The issue of sanctions against Parimatch appeared out of nowhere and very quickly.
Market participants agree that Yaroslav Zheleznyak, working in the interests of 1xBet, tried to save the Russians, but when it became clear that this was impossible and public pressure did not allow another decision to be made on them, the Russian bookmaker “asked” for his representative in the Ukrainian authorities Zheleznyak “pull Parimatch behind you.”
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