Who is behind the Diamond Pay payment system, which in a short period of time has effectively monopolized payments in the gambling market and taken control of 70% of all gambling money in Ukraine?
As we already know, on July 19, the NBU suspended the provision of services, and on July 22, it revoked the license of Diamond Pay LLC on the grounds that the company was controlled by representatives of the Russian Federation.
It seems strange that it took the regulator a whole year and several media scandals to check this payment, to notice its criminal activity and the real beneficiaries. But it is what it is.
In order to make the picture more complete and to make the officials involved in the Diamond Pay scheme realize that their cooperation with the enemy will not go unnoticed by the public, I am publishing several important fragments from the materials of the relevant authorities.
These episodes not only reveal the real ownership structure of Diamond Pay, but also demonstrate how its owners withdrew money from it, avoided paying taxes and paid money to the family of Yevhen Yakhniia, a member of the KRAIL.
To recap.
In 2023, with approximately 18 employees, Diamond Pay received net income from its activities in the amount of UAH 2,602,646,000, while the net profit of this payment system amounted to approximately 9% of the income.
For comparison, Nova Poshta’s payment system, NovaPay, has a profit margin of about 50% of revenue.
«Diamond Pei underreported its profits by paying for fictitious services and making unclear payments to controlled individual entrepreneurs and even civil servants. There are more than forty such entities.
Here is a payment, according to which on 04/16/2024, Lilia Yakhniy, a private entrepreneur, receives UAH 800,000 from Diamond Pay LLC.
Tagiev is not a member of CRAIL, but according to the relevant services, he is one of the real owners of the Diamond Pay payment system.
The formal owner of the payment system through the company Diamond Consult LLC is a Kharkiv resident, Victoria Golubeva, who is the wife of Oleksandr Cherdak, a Kharkiv «businessman-converter» known in narrow circles.
At the same time, law enforcement agencies and the NBU believe that Cherdak and Golubeva are only minority partners in this business.
The real owners of Diamond Pay are Maxim Sigalov and Rasim Surkhay Ogly Tagiev.
Maksym Sigalov is a former deputy of the Krasnohvardiysk District Council of Dnipropetrovs’k Region from the Front of Changes party and co-owner of another payment system, E-pay, whose accounts were arrested by the court in 2016 on suspicion of collaboration with the LDPR militants.
Tagiyev Rasim Surkhay Ogly is a citizen of Azerbaijan and, in addition to controlling Diamond Pay, is considered by the relevant authorities to be a co-owner of the Vap-Capital exchange office network.
Tagiev’s partners in the «exchangers» include another well-known «businessman» — Yevhen Pulia.
Interestingly, in 2017, Tagiev Rasim Surkhay Ogly was detained by the SBU for giving a $35,000 bribe to Serhiy Shatsky, head of the NBU’s payment systems department.
It was also a high-profile story.
Players in the gambling market confirm to me that Maxim Sigalov is the main owner of Diamond Pay, and add that Sigalov has a brother in Russia, Igor Sigalov, who owns an online casino there called inbet.
Sources in the NBU also say that at the time of the decision to revoke Diamond Pay’s license, they had evidence of the payment system’s financial ties to Sigalov and Russia.
We are waiting to see how CRAIL will react to the fact of direct financing of one of its members.
Moreover, the NBU’s position on Diamond Pay’s ties to Russia is clear.
Mr. Rudyi, I think you should follow the example of the NBU and make a decision.
Be in the trend of fighting against everything Russian.