Court unblocks Cosmolot casino accounts (document)
7 November 2024 21:26
The court has unblocked Cosmolot’s (SpaceX) accounts, which had been blocked for more than six months due to accusations from the BES, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports, citing the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Decisions.
The company proved the groundlessness of the accusations in court together with the new owners, the American holding Nevada LLC.
Recently, the American investment holding Nevada Gaming announced the successful acquisition of the Ukrainian company SpaceX LLC, the official owner of Cosmolot online casino.
“We saw great potential and decided to fully acquire Cosmolot and develop it further. And now we have finally been heard and had a dialog with the state, which we have been waiting for, to prove our honesty,” said Arnulf Damerau, owner of Nevada LLC.
What is known about the case involving Cosmolot
At the end of April, it became known that the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine was conducting an investigation into tax evasion by the well-known online casino Cosmolot.
According to the investigation, the company paid out UAH 4.5 billion in winnings to players, out of which it failed to pay personal income tax and military duty totaling UAH 1.1 billion. These payments were recorded not as winnings, but as refunds of funds, i.e. deposits, to individuals that were allegedly not used during the game.
The BES reported that the company’s officials were not willing to cooperate with the investigation. In particular, they ignored the investigating judge’s ruling to provide temporary access to documents, refuse to provide information during interrogations, and hide primary business documents. The Bureau continues the investigation. As part of the investigation, the company’s bank accounts have been seized.
Before that, co-owner Arnulf Damerau said that corrupt officials in Ukraine demanded that he transfer half of his company to someone else’s offshore accounts.
Cosmolot is an online gambling website and, according to the publication, the 10th largest taxpayer in the country. Damerau became its co-owner in August 2023. Last October, the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine raided the company. Damerau was accused of violating gambling laws and tax evasion in the amount of 560 million euros, and the company’s accounts were frozen.
Damerau claimed that “the charges against the company are fabricated”. According to him, Cosmolot started operating only in 2021, after the Ukrainian government changed the gambling legislation. Last year, the site’s total revenue amounted to €208 million, compared to €4.8 million in 2022 and €250 thousand in 2021. According to official tax reports, the company paid €60 million in taxes last year. According to Damerau, the State Tax Service audited its accounts in August.
The businessman also said that in December, he met with the authorities in Vienna and was told that legal claims against Kosmolot would be dropped if he agreed to transfer control of half of the company to an offshore trust. Damerau claimed that he had told EU and US law enforcement officials about this.
“I don’t want to talk about what is happening to me as a businessman trying to invest in Ukraine, because the people responsible for this are in the minority, and they are betraying the younger generation of Ukrainians who are giving their blood to give their country a European future. This is a country that aspires to be part of NATO and the European Union, but what is happening there now – by a small minority – gives me a déjà vu of the darkest days of Yanukovych,” he said.
