The presidential decree on sanctions against Parimatch LLC and a number of other companies of Parimatch holding led to the almost complete termination of its activities in Ukraine, the CEO of Parimatch holding Maxim Lyashko said at a press conference in Kiev on Saturday.
“Overnight banks started disabling the ability to withdraw client funds. About 250 million UAH of clients’ funds have been blocked, they are in the company’s current accounts,” he said, expressing confidence that players will be able to access their funds.
CEO of LLC “Parimatch”, which in Ukraine owns a license for betting and online casinos, Natalia Gilevich said that we are talking about several tens of thousands of customers.
Lyashko added that banks began to break off relations with the company in the last two or three weeks, and state banks were the first to do so.
According to him, the presidential decree on sanctions has not yet been officially published, which means it has not entered into force, so theoretically clients should be able to withdraw funds, but in fact they are blocked.
The CEO of Parimatch also noted that the company, under the terms of the license, continues to maintain the system, and players can continue to bet, but when the decree officially comes into force, the company will stop the work of the system.
Lyashko pointed out that the sanctions affected the main B2C companies in the holding, for which the Ukrainian market represented “the lion’s share. According to him, there is also a B2B direction in the holding. (In January of this year, the holding announced the launch of a new company, GR8 Tech, which will work on the B2B market and is the successor to Parimatch Tech – IF-U).
Speaking about the impact of the Ukrainian sanctions on the holding company’s operations on other markets, the CEO of Parimatch stressed that the reputational blow caused would be almost impossible to repair, but the Ukrainian sanctions do not apply to other markets and there is no broad practice of other jurisdictions adopting sanctions following Ukraine.
Lyashko once again noted that the company does not have any documents and a generally clear understanding of why sanctions were imposed on it. “The wording that all these companies have to do with Russian assets is categorically untrue,” the CEO said, recalling that relations with the Russian market were finally severed a year ago.
As for taxes, he said that last year the company paid 280 mln hryvnia in taxes due to its transition to a 2% simplified tax, whereas after the company abolished that option it paid over 400 mln hryvnia in January-February this year, and expected to pay 250-280 mln hryvnia in March and a comparable profit.
The representatives of the company said that according to the materials of the SBU the Economic Security Bureau is investigating the tax payments by “30-something” gambling market companies, among which there is “Parimatch”, but there are no decisions on it at the moment.
When asked whether any demands were made of the holding company or whether the sanctions were an attempt to clear the market, Lyashko said that “they may be inclined to something or clear it for someone”, but there was no evidence, so the company would not comment on this and would seek to lift the sanctions.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on March 10, which enacted the same day the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) to impose sanctions against 120 individuals and 287 legal entities. Among them are Ukrainian LLC “Parimatch”, Financial Company “Leo”, “PokermatchUA”, “Your Betting Company” and “Play Fan Investment”.
From the Parimatch holding, the new sanctions also affected Parimatch United Investments Limited (UK) Fullgear Investments Ltd, Auspicia Limited (both Cyprus), Suncast Furure N.V. (Curacao, Netherlands), and Parimatch Foundation Limited (Cyprus), as well as a whole group of individuals abroad.
Of the five companies in the register that received a license from the Gambling and Lottery Regulatory Commission (KRAIL) for betting activities, the decree affected three: Parimatch, Your Betting Company and Play Fan Investment. The latter two already had their licenses revoked by the CRAIL earlier – in September and December 2022, respectively. The two remaining companies in the registry are bookmaker company “Favbet” and “Vbet Ukraine”.
