Publicly, "Diya" is presented as a wartime success - a state in a smartphone, savings of hundreds of billions and a technological breakthrough. But in parallel with the official version, there is another story: financial flows from the gambling business, which include Russian beneficiaries, offshore gaskets, private companies with minimal staff and tax breaks, issued under the banner of "digital transformation". Against this background, the wife of Deputy Prime Minister Mikhail Fedorov demonstrates a lifestyle that is difficult to explain only by state salaries and official figures of "billions saved."
Mykhailo Fedorov has been building his own political brand for years as the face of a digital state. "Diya" supposedly saves the budget tens and hundreds of billions, the state becomes transparent, corruption is "taken out by algorithms." But when you look at who exactly is behind the money, the picture looks different.
The key node in this story is the financial company “Yedynyi Prostir”. Formally, it is an ordinary non-bank financial institution with small indicators and no public history of big business. However, it is through it that payments in the “Diya” application are processed, and it is it that takes a commission from each transaction — an average of 1.5% to 2.2%, according to journalistic investigations.
The owner of "Single Space" is Igor Zotko. Before the war, this company was practically not noticeable on the market, but received a monopoly role in the payment infrastructure of the state application. Zotko himself simultaneously entered the gambling business and became a co-owner of the Pin-Up online casino structures, as well as the operating director of this brand.
And here a key question arises: a state application that millions of citizens are obliged to use is integrated with a private payment company associated with online gambling. It is Pin-Up, according to investigators, that has ownership chains involving Russian beneficiaries who formally withdrew from Ukrainian legal entities after 2022, but retained influence through offshore and shell companies. That is, the money moving around the state service intersects with gambling flows that have a Russian trace.
Another player is FavBet. The company has been repeatedly linked to the use of alternative payment routes, in particular services such as Diamond Pay, through which funds are transferred abroad, including through shell legal entities and "charitable" funds. The scheme also involves Ukrainian banks that conduct transactions under the guise of ordinary legal payments. According to the logic of critics of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, this is not just a "fintech ecosystem", but a well-established mechanism for pumping money out of Ukraine. These same flows, according to sources, may fall under the tax benefits regime as "innovative" or "digital services."
A separate story is Cosmolot / Cosmobet. This is one of the most powerful gambling empires in Ukraine, which is associated with a Russian citizen, Sergey Tokarev. It is the structures associated with Cosmolot / Cosmobet that law enforcement officers accuse of tax evasion in the amount of more than 1 billion UAH (estimates range from 1.15 to 1.2 billion UAH). The investigation considered part of the funds of companies associated with this brand to be subject to seizure in the amount of hundreds of millions of UAH.
Tokarev himself, according to open sources, built his legal status in Ukraine through structures in the IT and investment sectors. He entered the “Diya.City” regime — a special legal and tax regime for IT companies, which is overseen by the Ministry of Digital Economy. At the same time, he is associated with funds and projects in the Ukrainian technological ecosystem (in particular, with the Roosh investment fund), which gives him the reputation of an “IT investor” rather than the owner of an online casino with a Russian background. It is thanks to this, as critics claim, that gambling capital with Russian roots gained access to tax benefits in the status of an “innovative business”, instead of paying full rates and replenishing the budget. The state’s losses from such schemes are estimated at at least UAH 1.2 billion.
In fact, we see such a construction.
First: "Diya" is moving from the status of a purely state service to the status of a monetized platform, a marketplace, where private structures gain access to a million-strong audience and critical payment infrastructure. This was directly confirmed by Fedorov himself when he said that "Diya" is becoming a commercial service, which over time may even be spun off into a separate company, and then to an IPO.
Second: the key beneficiaries at this junction of "state - platform - payments" are companies related to the gambling business, including Pin-Up and Cosmolot/Cosmobet. Some of these structures are of Russian origin or have management that worked for the Russian market until 2022 and continues to remain in the schemes through offshore.
Third: the “Diya.City” regime, created and promoted by Fedorov’s team, in practice becomes not only a “tax haven for Ukrainian IT”, but also a legal corridor for very big money, which is traditionally associated not with state services, but with casinos and gambling. This is where the questions arise — who really benefits from the digital reform: the budget or private groups with offshore “roofs” and Russian traces?
Against this background, Fedorov's personal image — bright presentations, announcements of "savings of 184 billion," and the public demonstration of his wife's luxurious lifestyle alongside it — looks like more than just the private history of a high-ranking official's family.
This looks like a showcase behind which a system of access to money operates, flowing through the "digital state", but not controlled by the state.
The key risk in this story is not only moral, but also security.
If companies associated with Russian capital or people with a Russian background access critical digital infrastructure and payment gateways of state services, this means not only withdrawing money, but also access to data and transaction data. That is, the financial circulatory system of the "state in a smartphone" ends up in the hands of private intermediaries.
