In the summer of 2021, the @donate bot appeared in Telegram, which allows Telegram channels to easily collect donations from readers. Gradually, the owners of many channels began to use it. A year later, premium accounts became available in Telegram, but it turned out to be impossible to pay for them from Russia due to sanctions – and immediately @PremiumBot appeared, allowing you to bypass the restrictions. Both bots give the impression of being related to the administration of the service, so that users can safely trust them with their data. Mediazona decided to take a closer look at them and found out that formally both bots are connected not with Telegram, but with Kazan businessman Dmitry Eremeev.
The main thing from the text in short
- Neither @donate nor @PremiumBot are officially associated with the Telegram administration, but they really allow you to make donations and pay for a premium account.
- The donation service denied registration to several journalists, citing a rule that prohibits “political criticism” from channels.
- The @donate administration justified these restrictions with the “rules of payment providers.”
- Money from users in Russia passes through a network of payment providers and companies associated with Kazan entrepreneur Dmitry Eremeev.
- Eremeev – owner “Bank 131” and an old friend of the brothers Durov. According to the businessman, he helped them at the dawn of VKontakte.
- He was called an investor in the Toncoin cryptocurrency invented by Durov. Eremeev also invested in the company of the former commissar “Our” Masha Drokova, who promoted Toncoin.
- Eremeev himself denies that he is the owner of these two bots.
- When asked how payments from clients from Russia are processed, Eremeev answers as evasively as possible: “It is impossible to accept money from Russian bank cards so that they do not pass through Russia.”
“It’s a pity that I even started all this. I gave my data to some sheep,” journalist Farida Rustamova worries. In October 2021, she resigned from the Dozhd TV channel, and after the start of the war, she launched her own political blog, Faridaily. Expecting to collect donations from readers, she tried to connect to to your telegram channel @donate bot – it looked like an official bot from the administration of the service.
“They ask for a passport,” the journalist says, “and a photo, moreover, 3D.”
The bot has a short name @donate (without the prefix bot, as is required for all third-party bots) and a verification checkbox. The bot was talked about in the media writing about technology. “Given the depth of integration of the service into the messenger, we can make a logical conclusion that it could not have done without the team of the messenger itself,” the Durov Code website noted.
Despite the documents provided, she was refused registration. Other journalists writing about politics in Russia faced the same rejection, such as Republic editor-in-chief Dmitry Kolezev and Meduza editor Alexei Kovalev.
In response to Mediazona’s question about these refusals, Telegram spokesman Richard Berti said that “at the moment, Telegram does not offer an official opportunity to collect donations from channel subscribers.”
“Bots on the platform like @donate are not affiliated with Telegram. They have their own owners, teams and policies,” he wrote.
zona.media, 06/10/2022, “Telegram: monetization of telegram channels of journalists Kolezev and Rustamova was disabled by the administration of a bot not related to the messenger itself”: Telegram representative Richard Berti told Mediazone that the monetization ban imposed by the @donate bot on the telegram channels of journalists Farida Rustamova and Dmitry Kolezev has nothing to do with the messenger’s politics.
“At the moment, Telegram does not offer an official opportunity to collect donations from channel subscribers. Platform bots like @donate are not related to Telegram. They have their own owners, teams and policies, ”wrote a Telegram representative.
Former political journalists Rustamova and Kolezev reportedthat Telegram refused to enable monetization in their telegram channels. In the case of Kolezev, support referred to “coverage of political topics”, and Rustamova refused to disclose the reasons for the refusal, suggesting that they be found in the list of prohibited topics.
According to this list, in order to enable monetization in the Telegram channel, there should be no discrimination, “negative or critical statements about politics” and calls for extremism.
“Quite a lot of political channels use this bot and it works great for them. What kind of selective approach is not clear, ”wrote Kolezev. — Inset K.ru
The bot administration also reacted to the scandal, emphasizing that the service is not associated with Telegram and “only uses the wide possibilities of the platform for writing bots.”
“As an independent service, we set our own rules and requirements for authors. Since its inception, the policy has a clause regarding the content of authors: does not contain propaganda of certain political beliefs, as well as negative or critical statements about politics”, — said in a message from the administration.
The service explained such restrictions by observing “including the rules of the payment providers that serve us.”
One of these providers is obviously Smart Glocal. It is with her that anyone who tries to transfer money through the @donate bot enters into a user agreement.
Smart Glocal handles more than just donations to Telegram channel authors. When at the end of June in telegram there is a paid subscription, users from Russia faced the fact that they could not pay for it: after the start of the war, Visa and Mastercard stopped servicing cards issued in Russia. Apple also left the country. After that, @PremiumBot appeared in the telegram, through which you can pay for a subscription without any restrictions, and even with a significant discount – 299 rubles instead of 449 through the App Store.
New bot notifications immediately began to appear on sites that write about technology. When paying, the bot warns that it has nothing to do with Telegram, but there is no deception here – the account really switches to “premium” mode. At the same time, a warning pops up that the data will be stored by Smart Glocal.
Kino Kwok has been mentioned more than once as the manager of Chinese payment networks. In 2015, Yandex announced a partnership with the online trading platform TradeEase, which planned to “attract about 100,000 customers from Russia in the first months of operation and 1 million customers by the end of the year.” It was claimed that TradeEase was created “thanks to the Bank of China, the government of Suifenhe city and the Chinese payment service PayEase.”
The press release has now been deleted, but a copy preserved in the web archive and RBC publications. The publication then noted that Kino Kwok is the CEO of PayEase. The same is evidenced by the data of the Chinese and British business registers.
But still, not Chinese entrepreneurs are behind Smart Glocal.
The Bell, 08/26/2019, “Slumdog Banker: The Story of a Google Algorithm Cracker Who Decided to Build a New Russian Bank”: Eremeev’s new business idea lay on the surface. A check from Google and a conversation with a VTB teller at the dawn of a career as an SEO specialist clearly identified the problem – working from Russia with foreign clients, it is very difficult to get your money from them. The army of freelancers from India, Ukraine, Belarus, China and other countries faces exactly the same difficulties. In the 10 years since Eremeev founded the FIX group, the situation with cross-border transfers has not only not been resolved, but even worsened. “For example, cashback is thousands of microtransactions daily that must pass through borders,” Eremeev explains. “All the major players in the Internet market are abroad and they also pay from abroad – webmasters, programmers, designers, photographers and other freelancers,” continues Alexander Magomedov, CEO of Bank 131 created by Eremeev (he is named after the Kazan lyceum where he studied). Some of them still receive payment by checks, the alternative is to open a legal entity in some offshore or use the services of a few services, the work of which is not always legal, and the commissions are very high.
Before coming up with a new bank together with Eremeev, Magomedov worked in the Yandex.Checkout payment service and there he solved, in fact, the opposite task: how to deliver payments from individuals to different global companies – to the same Google or Aliexpress. […]
With the advent of new Internet giants like Airbnb, the problem of settlements has reached another level: “If I rent an apartment in Moscow through Airnbnb, the client’s money goes first to Ireland, a commission is charged there, and then they come back – that’s all, this is a cross-border operation. And immediately a lot of problems arise: to collect money from individuals, pay them also to physicists, transfer them to their local banks – all this is a big problem for companies. — Inset K.ru
According to the same The Bell, citing acquaintances of the entrepreneur, Eremeev was one of the investors in another project of Pavel Durov – the Toncoin cryptocurrency. The entrepreneur himself then refused to comment on this statement, and now in correspondence with Mediazona he said that “unfortunately, he is not an investor in Telegram.”
Eremeev was the first investor in Masha Drokova’s California venture fund [Сейчас сменила фамилию на Бучер.] Day One Ventures, the former commissioner of Nashi herself told Thrive Global about this. According to Drokova, the entrepreneur became not only an investor for her, but also a mentor.
Masha Drokova also participated in the promotion of the Toncoin cryptocurrency for a Western audience, recalls a Mediazona interlocutor who is well acquainted with the cryptocurrency market. “Drokova then insisted that her name was not publicly mentioned anywhere in the context of this project, emphasizing that she was simply helping the team out of friendship,” the source adds.
Dmitry Eremeev himself answered Mediazona’s question about investments in Drokova’s structures as follows: “I have great respect for Masha, so I would not like to comment on the presence of investments without her consent or participation.”
Investor Masha Drokova began her career in the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement. The daughter of the deputy head of the administration of Tambov quickly became one of the main public figures of the movement: she was a federal commissioner, press secretary of Nashi, worked in Rosmolodezh, received a medal of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 1st degree. During a meeting with Vladimir Putin in 2009, Drokova kissed the president on the cheek, and already in 2011 she became the heroine of a documentary “Putin’s Kiss” — stories of her disillusionment with the pro-Kremlin movement. However, by this time, the Kremlin’s youth projects were actually curtailed, and the former Nashi went on a free voyage.
Unlike most colleagues in the movement, Drokova moved to the United States, where she began a career in business with founders from Russia: she was a PR director at Acronis and held a similar position at Runa Capital, a venture capital company.
In 2017, she launched her own venture fund, Day One Ventures. In a fundraising letter, March 2022 obtained by the Washington PostDrokova boasted of connections with wealthy Russians, including a billionaire Alexander Mamutwhom she indicated as an investor, and with structures Vladimir Evtushenkov. Back in 2018, both businessmen were included in the US in list of Russian oligarchs close to Putin.
Now Masha Drokova claims that the letter was fabricated, and she herself has long avoided money from Russia. “This is toxic money from 2014, after Crimea,” she told the Washington Post.
Later, she sent a letter condemning Putin to the newspaper through her lawyers. “Let me be clear: I deeply regret that I ever joined Nashi and supported Putin and his government,” Drokova wrote. – I have not been associated with Russian politics and Russian politicians since 2009 and have quietly supported people and organizations that oppose the Putin regime. I have severed all ties with Russian business and choose carefully who to do business with and who not to do business with.”
At the same time, back in April 2009, Masha Drokova was the commissar of Nashi and metal boots portraits of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and former US President George W. Bush.
“Team confirmed to me”
Dmitry Eremeev denies that he is the owner of the @donate bot. “Unfortunately, I can’t confirm that I am the owner, but I am familiar with the @donate team, I actively help them, we are considering various partnership options,” the entrepreneur says in correspondence with Mediazona.
The entrepreneur confirmed that the Jersey-based Tapiworld “is an affiliate of my ePN project” and that the money from the @donate bot is indeed being transferred through the Cypriot company Tapicash.
“Smart Glocal has an agreement with the Cypriot company Tapicash, under which part of the settlements with European recipients are carried out through the Visa / MC payment system,” Eremeev wrote.
According to him, all payment data of users from Russia go through Smart Glocal, and this company stores data in accordance with Hong Kong law. The personal data of the recipients of money – that is, those who collect donations – according to him, is stored by another structure that is subject to European law.
“The technical contractor for KYC is SumSub, one of the leaders in working with biometric data in Europe. As far as I understand, the data is processed in the jurisdiction of the European Union,” explains the entrepreneur.
When asked how exactly a client’s payment is processed within Russia and whether his structures are involved in this process, Eremeev answered evasively: “It is impossible to accept money from Russian bank cards so that they do not pass through Russia; At least I don’t know of such an option.
“As for @donate transactions with non-Russian bank cards, they, of course, are never processed through Russia and do not affect Russian structures in any way. The @donate team just confirmed this to me again,” he added.
Telegram did not respond to Mediazona’s request, and Hong Kong businessman Kino Kwok did not respond to a message on LinkedIn either.