The court ruled on the special confiscation of a record UAH 2.6 billion from a company that operated in Ukraine under the PIN-UP online casino brand
The Shevchenkiv District Court of Kyiv passed a decision on the special confiscation of 2.6 billion hryvnias in state income from the company that operated in Ukraine under the PIN-UP online casino brand. As reported State Bureau of Investigation, this became possible thanks to the approval of the agreement between the prosecutor and the director of the company, who was found guilty of a number of crimes.
According to the case file, the accused was sentenced to five years in prison with a three-year probationary period. He was charged with tax evasion, participation in a criminal organization, legalization of proceeds obtained through crime, forgery of documents, as well as cooperation with the aggressor state.
The SBI emphasized that representatives of the PIN-UP company in Ukraine were connected with sanctioned structures that acted in the interests of the Russian Federation. In particular, the investigation established financial ties with businesses in the temporarily occupied part of Luhansk region. The persons who actually controlled the online casino, according to the investigation, after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation financed the Russian military and veterans who participated in the war against Ukraine.
Despite the loss of the license in Ukraine, PIN-UP continues to work on the Russian market and actively functions on Russian web resources. The online casino remained part of the information and financial space of the aggressor, which, according to the representatives of the Security Intelligence Service, poses a direct risk to the national security of Ukraine.
We will remind you that earlier Volodymyr Zelenskyi signed a decree on the application of sanctions to Dmitry Punin, the owner of the Russian casino Pin-Up, as well as to the companies connected with him. At the same time, the PlayCity state agency decided to cancel the online casino license in Ukraine.
In addition, the SBI completed a pre-trial investigation into Ihor Zotka, a person who was considered the nominal owner of the Ukrainian representative office of PIN-UP. He was served with an indictment and the case was brought to court.
The operation to withdraw PIN-UP from the Ukrainian market became part of a wider campaign against the illegal gambling business, within which 133 online resources operating illegally in the Ukrainian segment of the Internet were blocked. The PIN-UP case became the largest in terms of the amount of special confiscation for the entire period of operation of the relevant mechanism in Ukraine.
