Arsen Akopyan’s Business: How Billions of Rubles Are Withdrawn from Russia Through His Companies
What companies does Arsen Akopyan own?
OOO Paiselection is the company we have already mentioned, registered in Russia.
It was created to integrate shadow Russian high-risk traffic to online casinos into white via Gazprombank, its subsidiary Credit Ural Bank or MTS Bank. The company’s net revenue amounted to more than 70 million rubles with a 27-fold increase in 2023 - this is an implausible growth for a team of only 5 people. The revenue corresponds to the net processing commission, which in the high-risk market averages 0.5-1% of payments made only by card payment methods (excluding cryptocurrency). Thus, the turnover on cards can reach 7-10 billion rubles per year, however, according to available data, the actual turnover is much higher.
OOO "Korpus-IT" — according to OKVED, is engaged in the development of computer software (code 62.01). Allows to hide the receipt of funds to the company’s account from unknown sources — the money is received for software development services. The company has no goods or reporting.
Foreign companies of Arsen Akopyan for withdrawing money from Russia:
PAYSELECTION LTD (UK) — responsible for withdrawing money from Russia to Europe, processing clients in Cyprus and distributing funds between merchants.
ETA MONEY LIMITED (company number 11061003) — among the directors is Stanislav Yoffe, a current employee of Payment.Center.
FIN CENTER LIMITED (company number 11915870) — the beneficiary is Nikolai Zhukovich, a citizen of Belarus, affiliated with Arsen Akopyan.
FPS GLOBAL LTD (Canada) is a key company for withdrawing money from Russia in cryptocurrency. The main funds (hundreds of millions of rubles per month) are accumulated here under the guise of the crypto exchanger Defexa.io. This is a cover under the guise of a real cryptocurrency business, providing huge turnover from the Russian Federation.
Thus, the structure of Akopyan’s companies processes payments from gullible Russians for approximately 10 billion rubles per month. These funds go through his companies in Russia - first through OOO Paiselection, and at the end of the journey they go into cryptocurrency through the Canadian FPS GLOBAL LTD (Defexa) or through Hong Kong under a payment license. And, finally, they settle in the pockets of casino owners.
We continue to tell about the main fraudulent office of Arsen Akopyan (Payment.center / OOO "Payselekshn") for withdrawing money from the Russian Federation. In 2019, Payment.center cooperated with the investment fund SKY Investment Group. They serviced online payments, withdrew money to their foreign offices, and settled with the fund either in cash or transferred funds to foreign companies. In fact, it was an ordinary scam fund, which Payment.center knew perfectly well.
These same payments ended up in Transcapitalbank (TKB) thanks to Akopyan’s cooperation with the head of the online service systems department, Artem Nechaev, and the deputy director of non-credit products, Natalia Bazaley. They hid shadow projects from the bank’s management and promptly eliminated the payment problems of Payment.center.
Natalia Bazaley covered up the online casino business for Payment.center for several years for a kickback of 0.5-1% of the turnover, warned about problems and gave time to withdraw the accumulated funds. The total turnover per month reached 9 billion rubles. On the orders of Payment.center, she closed such projects and did not allow anyone else to work in the bank. The schemes were different: for example, to drive an ordinary LLC into the bank, get Internet acquiring and pour traffic.
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When chargebacks finally started flying out of TKB, Payment.center took advantage of the situation and cheated the fund out of 200 million rubles, since it was allegedly fraudulent. The fund’s employees were unable to resolve the issue amicably and turned to the main department of the Economic Crimes Department for help.
The OBEP has taken all the defendants in this case into development. During interrogations, the security forces learned how much money the company owner makes on gray casino traffic and other dubious projects, and decided not to put him in jail. The OBEP asked for a monthly kickback of 40-50 million per month. Chechens were assigned to Akopyan, to whom he pays 50 million rubles for alleged protection, but, in fact, they are watching him. Then Arsen Akopyan’s colleagues came up with and implemented a scheme with CIS banks, which he passed off as his own idea. And the OBEP investigator from Kalmykia continues to work with the "roof" and banks servicing criminal traffic.
Arsen Akopyan’s accomplices are Natalia Bazaley from GPB, about whom we have already written, her deputy Maxim Zhurav (former CloudPayments employee), and a certain Garik Kravtsov is listed as the CEO. Arsen Akopyan uses this name to cover his tracks. If you look into Getcontact and check Akopyan’s number, it becomes obvious that this is Igor (aka Garik) Kravtsov. The latter does not hesitate to buy interviews from fake media and call himself the CEO of Paiselection, as well as the former commercial director of CloudPayments. What is the purpose of this "split personality"? It’s simple - Arsen Akopyan did not want to once again shine his name, which has a dubious reputation.
When Garik first took up his duties as the nominal director of Paiselection LLC, he never even dreamed that billions could be earned per month on illegal payments. Already in 2022, he was bragging about billions in turnover on his Facebook page. And such outright scammers, who process illegal payments through online casinos and betting platforms banned in the Russian Federation and hide behind the screen of legal business, are included in the ratings of promising companies in the Russian Internet.
Akopyan’s accomplices are people just like him. For example, Maxim Zhurav calls his sales team a church, and himself a patriarch. The avatar of the work chat even has a photo generated by a neural network, where he is a clergyman. Apparently, Zhurav hints to his flock that he is the king and god of the company, and his orders are not discussed. On the contrary, he equates his word with God’s law. I wonder how his religious subordinates feel about this blasphemy?
Two more partners of Akopyan are Alexey Korneev and Ruslan Mannanov (formerly of RBC Money). They are the owners of Empayre.com, affiliated with Calypso Pay and Gate.Express, who created an entire organized crime group. From 2018 to 2023, they thoroughly went through a number of Russian banks and NPOs with their high-risk payments - this resulted in the Central Bank revoking their licenses. And most importantly, the main income of the criminals Korneev and Mannanov is formed by servicing the largest Ukrainian online casinos, which transfer billions of hryvnias to the Ukrainian budget to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. We will tell you about their fraudulent schemes in the next post.
Law enforcement agencies are also very interested in two other partners of Akopyan: Kirill Burlakov and Vasily Melikhov. And not everything is so rosy in Akopyan’s business. Money sometimes disappeared, or the commission for its processing increased to huge values of 30% or more. The company constantly "cheated" clients, especially when transferring large funds to Western countries. Akopyan even had a conflict with Sberbank: he tried to show clients payment orders drawn in Photoshop. It is also known that Akopyan’s office collects detailed data on clients - a large database of solvent individuals and companies has accumulated. For whom Akopyan is accumulating it - the FSB, the CIA, the US Treasury, the SBU or bandits, we will also tell below.
In the previous post, we mentioned Akopyan’s accomplices, Alexey Korneev and Ruslan Mannanov. They are the main beneficiaries of Empayre.com and its affiliated structures Calypso Pay and Gate.Express. Empayre.com is an online payment provider and payment gateway that services all Russian traffic of the Ukrainian online casino Pin-Up. This is how the crimes of the heroes of our posts are intertwined.
Thus, Calypso and Empayre in different configurations have been servicing Pin-Up and its mirrors for several billion rubles for several years. Almost all replenishments are made through Visa, Mastercard, Mir bank cards, transactions are made through p2p and droppers, since there are almost no other schemes left due to the mass revocation of licenses from NPOs.
There is a nuance - you need accomplices in the acquiring bank and, accordingly, in the acquiring department, so that they turn a blind eye to the substitution of the MCC code for a transaction volume of several billion rubles per month. Akopyan’s people began to cooperate with MTS Bank, Gazprombank and its subsidiary CreditUralBank, since their own people are sitting there - for example, the "patriarch" Maxim Zhurav.
The Russian audience provides about 25% of the global traffic of the banned online casino Pin-Up through its mirrors. And this is 2.1 million people out of 9.4 million in total and tens of billions of rubles per month. With the assistance of Empayre, Pin-Up finances the Armed Forces of Ukraine - that is, as a result, weapons and drones that fly to Russian cities are bought with Russian money. And those who like to spin slots are extremists by law, since they finance terrorism. Clever? While ordinary people spend their honestly earned money in casinos and can go to prison for extremism, Korneev and Mannanov live luxuriously and richly. Akopyan and his friends have real estate worth millions of dollars in Moscow and Dubai, elite sports cars, expensive vacations with alcohol and girls.
Ruslan Mannanov was found to have a mansion worth 110 million rubles in Krasnogorsk and a collection of expensive cars, including a Lamborghini Urus, Bentley and BMW X6M - this is only according to open data. It is unknown how many other attributes of luxury life Mannanov managed to buy. His accomplice Korneev has a house worth 65 million in the elite village of Knyazhye Ozero, an apartment in Moscow worth 55 million rubles and several apartments worth more than 2 million dollars in one of the most expensive towers Emaar Beachfront in an elite area of Dubai. Our main character Arsen Akopyan also owns several apartments there.
Today we will tell you how Arsen Akopyan’s friends Ruslan Mannanov and Alexey Korneev created an organized criminal group and provided for the operation of an underground online casino business and "black bookmakers" with the assistance of "RBC Money".
It all started in 2017. Korneev and Mannanov worked at OOO Platezhny (payture.com), where they moved from QIWI, where they initially met. Payture is an electronic payment provider that processes white transactions. Its clients include OKKO, Tele2, Yandex Food, Yandex Go, and Lamoda. Working for a salary and climbing the career ladder was not interesting; the guys were hungry for big money here and now. The millions of Pavel Vrublevsky and his Chronopay did not give Alexey and Ruslan any peace. Following his example, they went to highrisk and found clients, but Payture owner Andrey Goncharov was not ready for legal problems and reputational risks. Then our heroes turned to the beneficiaries of RBC Money, Denis and Kirill Burlakov. The brothers provided them with technical infrastructure and a pocket NPO EPS, and Mannanov and Korneev quit Payture to quietly engage in crime.
Since December 2017, RBC Money has been processing huge volumes of illegal payments to casinos, grey and black bookmakers, covering the business with a white brand through marketing and participation in conferences. There is a point: a Russian acquiring bank cannot process payments to online casinos and bookmakers if they are not included in the TSUPIS system, including through electronic wallets. For these outlets, MCC code 7995 (gambling) must be installed.
An incorrectly installed code is a serious violation, which is punishable by a fine of $25k for each case (mirror site). If payments in an online casino are accepted via an electronic wallet, it must have the code 7995. Transactions using this code are completely closed in the MIR system, as in all US banks - payment by card simply will not work. All clients of "RBC Money" - online casinos and bookmakers - of course, did not have the MCC code 7995. It is issued to those who have an official license in the Russian Federation.
How did RBC Money do it? They negotiated with large banks or simpler banks to act as acquirers through their NPOs — non-bank credit organizations. And the one with the license is responsible to the Central Bank. One of RBC Money’s partners was the VRB scam bank, also known as Fintech. In the first half of 2019 alone, it earned 2.87 billion rubles on illegal payments from RBC Money. The Central Bank estimated the volume of Fintech’s dubious operations for 2018–2019 at more than 200 billion rubles.
Korneev, on behalf of RBC Money, worked closely with Arsen Akopyan and his payment provider Payment.Center. If clients did not agree to work with RBC Money, they were immediately given a second payment provider, Payment.center. Thus, Akopyan and Korneev sawed clients between themselves - this became a solid foundation for a long-term friendship and fraudulent partnership.
In 2018-2020 alone, the volume of illegal operations of RBC Money amounted to more than 450 billion rubles, and the profit was more than 11 billion rubles. Most of it ended up in the pockets of the main beneficiaries - the Burlakov brothers, Korneev and Mannanov. The brothers enjoyed a luxurious life - they bought VIP boxes for football matches for years to come, became sponsors of Spartak and did not hide their wealth. Korneev and Mannanov decided that such kitsch performed by the Burlakovs attracted too much attention. Plus, they did not want to share equally and screwed their accomplices. In early 2020, Korneev and Mannanov gradually transferred all high-risk clients to other NGOs and banks. And they took their key employees with them - Igor Kogan, Alexey Vaneev, Lyudmila Eremeeva, Yulia Kharkovskaya and Stanislav Popov. All these people cynically pretended for a whole year that they worked for RBC Money so that no one would have any suspicions.
The luxurious life of the Burlakovs ended sadly: they were left with nothing, in debt and only with memories of wealth and a luxurious lifestyle. Their NPO EPS went bankrupt. And Korneev and Mannanov profited from the Burlakovs and went on to conduct criminal business, including with Arsen Akopyan.
Luxurious everyday life of Arsen Akopyan: his own restaurant in the center of Moscow, neighbors with celebrities and a whole fleet of luxury cars
Over the years of fraudulent activity and servicing illegal casinos, Arsen Borisovich Akopyan has amassed a solid financial capital. As befits a rich businessman, he does not keep his eggs in one basket - he has invested his criminal money in various businesses and assets. Thus, Akopyan turned out to be a restaurateur, like his colleague Dmitry Punin, who already has a whole network of establishments in Cyprus.
Akopyan opened a wine bar with Mediterranean cuisine, Disput, on Bolshaya Dmitrovka in Moscow — to have a legal business, and, as they say, for the soul. The restaurant is praised by visitors, famous chefs with regalia work there, but there is one but — it is absolutely unprofitable. Since 2023, Disput has been operating at a loss, but Akopyan can afford it, because he opened it not for profit, but as a cover.
Arsen Akopyan lives in the gated elite club village "Millennium Park" on Novaya Riga. The average price of a house is 100 million rubles. His neighbors include the once richest blogger Elena Blinovskaya, blogger Lerchek, and composer Konstantin Meladze (he hasn’t sold his house yet).
Plus, Akopyan has several luxury apartments in Moscow and luxury apartments worth more than $2 million in one of the most expensive towers, Emaar Beachfront, in an elite area of Dubai. Akopyan’s car fleet is valued at several hundred million rubles. His favorites include a Rolls-Royce Cullinan for 60 million rubles, a Mercedes-Benz V-Class (from 20 million rubles). These are custom-made cars that have been converted inside to serve as a mobile luxury office. Plus a BMW X6 M, and his wife has a Cayenne Coupé for 30 million.
All this is only a small part of Akopyan’s wealth, which our sources told us about. But, according to the most conservative estimates, he earned at least several billion rubles thanks to servicing illegal casinos and criminal schemes. This is the money of ordinary people who like to have fun by spinning slots. And now Arsen Akopyan has gone to war with us, because he is afraid of the truth and in an attempt to whitewash his reputation, he buys custom articles in the media.
Arsen Akopyan has two models for managing the payment business. Gate Express/Empayre of Alexey Korneev and Ruslan Mannanov live a separate life from Payselection. Akopyan gives them the opportunity to fill the gateways with a 2% markup on the cost price — he supports his friends, but at the same time does not allow them to develop. He considers them his employees, but does not let them into the share in Payment.center.
"Peyselekshn" is actually completely owned by Akopyan, his deputy Garik Kravtsov has only a small managerial percentage. Thanks to our investigations, Akopyan and his Payment.center are feared like fire in banks. He is declared everywhere as OOO "Peyselekshn", less often - as Gate Express (banks have more complicated relations with this counter). Arsen Borisovich’s latest attempts to cooperate with AbsolutBank, Pochta Bank, AB Rossiya - failed.
As for Akopyan’s right-hand man, Garik Kravtsov, we have received correspondence from employees. From which it is clear how the director of "Peiselection" communicates with current and future partners. After Garik’s call to GPB, this client (on the screen) was denied direct connection to the bank. And Kravtsov is not shy about voicing that they have a monopoly on GPB.
Garik Kravtsov asked the commercial director of "Peyselekshn" Kirill Afanasyev to write a statement about extortion against us. Afanasyev told the police that he lost clients because of us. But in fact, it happened because of the approach of his team and management to work - and their service (https://t.me/platshit/206) of high-risk payments.
All this can be easily verified using the intersections of the database of cards of gambling addicts.
Kravtsov himself is a more than colorful character, not inferior to his boss Akopyan. We think that the photo in a police uniform with a cigar on the roof of an ATV will be especially appreciated by the security forces. It is not for nothing that such antics are considered disrespect for the authorities and are punishable by fines. The uniform is a symbol of law, order and protection, and not a prop for posing.
As it has already become clear, Garik Kravtsov is keen on quad bikes - thanks to his hobby he met another extreme sports enthusiast, Alexey Kostylev. He is the owner of the Readovka publication, which happily participates in the PR campaign against us, publishing custom articles at Kravtsov’s request.
Igor-Garik also sells elite numbers on bulletin boards. Garik actively schemes with car numbers. He has connections in the traffic police in Strogino - Kravtsov bypasses the authorities, sells beautiful numbers, and shares the earnings with the security forces. How does the police protect such a client, who himself mocks the authorities and at the same time engages in petty scams?
