Vigen Badalian Romikovych

Official biography

Entrepreneur and co-founder of SoftConstruct. I have created more than 40 technology brands in various industries, including gaming, website development, data processing solutions, and cryptocurrency. I founded such brands as BetConstruct, Fastex, Hoory, Ucraft, Vbet, PandaMR, and FeedConstruct.

Related parties

• none

Social media:

• Website: www.vigenbadalyan.com
• Instagram: @vigenbadalyan
• Facebook: Vigen Badalyan
• Twitter: @vigenbadalyan

Compromise.

How Vigen Badalyan’s Vbet online casino conceals billions of dollars of financial fraud and ties to Russia

According to the old and good tradition of the Ukrainian gambling market, there is nothing Ukrainian about Vbet.

Well, except for a formal legal entity that is registered exclusively under a license. Everything else is a spider web from offshore, where all your losses go.

Today, we will focus on one of the key companies for Vbet — SC IP LIMITED, which is registered on the small island of Jersey, which is part of the British jurisdiction.

It is this company that owns all international rights to the Vbet Trademark.

That is, this company is the real owner of the casino, and not all these one-day firms with kebab shops as beneficiaries.

It is interesting that SC IP LIMITED registered the rights to Vbet at different times, under different forms and for use in different countries. There is Vbet registered to work in Russia, there is one for Ukraine, etc.

In addition to Vbet, SC IP LIMITED owns the rights to SoftConstruct and BetConstruct, which are among the most powerful online casino, betting, and other software developers on the market.

They openly report that they are the main developers of products for online casinos in Russia.

But more on that later.

The same SC IP LIMITED is the owner of the Fastex crypto exchange brand.

The exchange is well-known, also represented in Russia, and is even a co-organizer of the famous annual Russian poker tournament Russian Poker Tour.

Due to the openness of the British jurisdiction on the island of Jersey, it was not difficult to find the beneficiaries of the powerful and influential SC IP LIMITED.

Its sole owners with a 50/50 share were Armenian IT businessmen Vigen and Vage Badalyan.

They are officially the owners of SoftConstruct and BetConstruct, which are a real IT monster in Armenia.

The Badalians did not particularly hide the fact that Vbet in Ukraine was their project, but at the end of 2022, after a wave of information about their work in Russia and ties to the Kremlin authorities, they formally withdrew from Vbet.

Instead, a certain Rudolf Poghosyan became the ultimate beneficiary.

He is considered a proxy of the Badalian brothers and another Ukrainian businessman of Armenian origin, Artur Hrantz, who is not de jure listed in Vbet, but de facto has control and a share.

Although Vbet management tries to deny any involvement of the Badalian brothers in Russia, this is not entirely true.

Their companies SoftConstruct and BetConstruct continue to operate in the Russian gambling market and service the products they produce, and the brothers themselves do have strong ties to the authorities of the aggressor country.

For example, in 2018, their company Softconstruct was entrusted with organizing celebrations in the State Duma of the Russian Federation to mark the 25th anniversary of friendship between Russia and Armenia.

Is it powerful?

Do you believe that outsiders and companies have access to the Russian State Duma for such events?

I don’t really believe it either.

And if there are no problems, why did the Badalian brothers urgently withdraw from the Ukrainian part of Vbet at the end of 2022, when they started talking about it?

We will talk about the facts of the Badalian brothers’ companies’ work in Russia later.

Tax authorities have added taxes that gambling and betting market players have to pay to the budget

The amount is simply outer space — 51.2 billion UAH!

The breakdown by brand looks like this:

Cosmolot — 22.5 billion.
Pin-UP — 19.5 billion.
Vbet — 5.6 billion.
Favbet — 2.2 billion.
First Casino — 1.3 billion.

I wonder if market players will try to challenge these additional charges or will they silently replenish the budget of the warring country?

Financial monitoring has blocked VBet and Pin-UP accounts with 2.860 billion UAH for 30 days.

570 million for VBet and 2.290 billion for Pin-UP

The blocking took place on the basis of Part 3 of Article 23 of the Law of Ukraine “On Prevention and Counteraction to Legalization (Laundering) of Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing.

To put it mildly, these market operators are suspected by law enforcement either of financial fraud or of having ties to the aggressor country.
But given the available information, it is likely to be both.

But then where are the law enforcement actions and judicial arrest?

This is the next procedural step.
Blocking the financial system is a kind of safeguard to prevent the withdrawal of funds from accounts when the suspects are already aware of the investigation plans, and there is no court arrest in criminal cases yet.
This is a “golden hour” for investigators to quickly run to court and seize funds.

Will this arrest happen?
This is a very good question, because given our realities, the complexity of the case, and the financial capabilities of gambling market operators, anything can happen, so the “they’ve made up their minds” scenario is not yet ruled out.

At least as of this morning, the issue is at the level of the Prosecutor General’s Office, where they are expected to make a decision on filing a lawsuit and arresting the company in the near future.
Or not to make such a decision, which will mean the possibility of withdrawing funds from the country by the said structures, after which the financial institution will look extreme, and there will be many questions to the PGO Office and investigators.

P.S. And yes, the NSDC meeting on the gambling market is being actively prepared, where the “sharks” of Russian business, not counting budgets and using certain law enforcement officers, are trying to push a bunch of small topics and get themselves out of the way.
We see everything and will tell everyone.
There is no need to do this.

FAVBET Casino Acting Minister of Youth and Sports Matviy Bidnyi met with the Ukrainian Ice Hockey Federation

Armenian VBet, working with Russians, has organized a hunt for competitors

VBet, an online casino with Armenian roots, has launched a “hunt for competitors”, speculating on the topic of fighting the Russian trace. At the same time, VBet is owned by Armenian owners who do business with Russians.

This is stated in the Apostrophe investigation.

On October 30, a petition No. 22/171744-ep appeared on the president’s website, calling for “Imposing sanctions on companies associated with the aggressor state…”. In the text, most of the companies on the KRAIL list, which licensed online casinos and bookmakers, are subject to “closure”. The author of the petition is Victoria Meliushkova. Her page shows no signs of interest in the industry and no demonstration of competence in the industry. The author’s page contains a list of companies where she worked, and Victoria Meliushkova’s previous place of work is Business Tuning Center (advertising and marketing), which published a post with a client — VBet bookmaker.

In the register, VBet is listed as VBET Ukraine LLC, which is managed by Giorgi Givishvili. In 2014, he was the owner of Margroup LLC (capital of UAH 200), and in 2022, he became the head of VBet, which paid UAH 100 million for the license alone. The beneficiary of VBet is listed in the registers as Armenian citizen Vigen Romikovich Badalyan, registered in Yerevan. The founder is Soft Construct Limited. Journalists found several versions of the VBet website — vbet.ua and a mirror of vbetua.com. VBet itself provides a manual on how to use the mirror, VPN, etc. If you go to the mirror site, the footer says “VBetua.com is operated by Radon V.B. No. 126922 in the Curacao Commercial Registry”.

Since 2003, Radon V.B. has been the owner of similar casinos in the world, one of which is Vbet, founded and managed by Vigen Badalian. Soft Construct Limited and BetConstruct are companies that develop infrastructure for Badalian’s empire. If you visit the BetConstruct website, you will find a mention of Soft Construct. The site has a section dedicated to partners, and among them is the Russian bookmaker Fonbet. BetCotstruct also mentions cooperation with the Russian BetCity. On the player sites, you can find a list of BetConstruct clients, some of which accept bets from Russians. The company also sponsors the Russian Poker Tour (in Armenia) through Fastex.

At the beginning of its work in Ukraine, VBet cooperated with the head of the Ukrainian Football Association Andriy Pavelko. The Armenian company became the main sponsor of the football championship, and later began to sponsor the national team. Last season, VBet was supposed to pay $1 million to Ukrainian clubs, but the clubs received 720 thousand, the rest was sent to the UAF. VBet also brought BetRadar to Ukraine, which received monopoly ownership of the betting rights of the company’s clubs. The deal is worth more than $100 thousand, but the clubs will not receive anything from it.

«In the few years of its Ukrainian registration, the Armenian bookmaker has managed to evolve from a participant in corruption schemes around football to a fighter against the Russian trace in Ukrainian business. Only such a business biography is definitely worth the attention of the investigative authorities, which have enough Russian threads on VBet’s collar to tie the hands of the most scandalous online bookmaker in Ukraine,» the article says.