How a Russian payment system is being passed off as British
As discovered by the Cheka-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, Sergey Malofeykin, a former member of the Delovaya Rossiya General Council and creator of the VIJU neural network, who was arrested for laundering, cashing, and transferring over 2 billion rubles abroad, was linked to the Payler payment system. It processes payments for businesses and individuals, including through e-wallets. Meanwhile, Malofeykin's business partner, Rashid Batyrbekov, who is also involved in the criminal case, was involved in cryptocurrency mining.
Malofeykin was detained on March 24 and brought to the Frunzensky Court in Ivanovo. The Ivanovo region is no stranger to the Malofekins: Svetlana Malofeikina (Korchagina) is from there, and her father, Evgeny Korchagin, runs a business there as a sole proprietor in the shoe trade. In 2022, he briefly founded ES LLC, replacing Evgeny Malofeikina, Sergey Malofeikina's brother. ES, which generated 317 million rubles in revenue last year, is now registered to Igor Vintsukevich, another of Malofeikina's business partners.
Malofeikin himself should have been inoculated against money laundering scams 15-20 years ago, when, according to leaked data, he worked for TsOP Energo, founded by Transinvestbank (owned by Mosenergo). A major scandal erupted in 2008, when it was discovered that certain Mosenergo managers had seized control of the bank, diluting Mosenergo's stake from 73% to 24% and registering their assets in offshore companies. A criminal case was opened for the fraudulent theft of 850 million rubles from Mosenergo. During the trial, it was discovered that the company allocated 320 million rubles to buy back the stolen shares from its own managers, but the money went to an affiliated law firm, the Bureau of Legal Research, and disappeared. In 2009, Mosenergo Deputy General Director Pavel Smirnov and the General Director of the Bureau of Legal Research Vladislav Buldakov were arrested in absentia—they had realized what was going on and fled. The story is old, but recently it suddenly took on a new twist: Smirnov was found last summer in Belarus and is now in a Moscow pretrial detention center.
But Malofeykin failed to learn from others' mistakes and ended up in pretrial detention himself. He is accused of organizing money laundering for several companies associated with PJSC Samolet Group of Companies (approximately 30% is owned by the family of the recently deceased businessman Mikhail Kenin). A total of 17 people are implicated in the case, and during interrogations, those detained named Malofeykin as the group's leader. The scheme was straightforward: various private security companies entered into security contracts with Samolet firms, which received money but did not actually provide the services. This had been going on since at least 2020. The funds were transferred through the private security companies' accounts to contractors and cashed out. Two Astrakhan lawyers, Vladimir Egazaryants and Sergei Astafurov, who maintained contact with Samolet's top managers, helped implement the scheme. Astafurov, a former GUEBiPK employee, had previously been convicted of abuse of office. In 2018, he was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for soliciting a bribe. $300,000 in 2014 against Andrey Komarov, the owner of the Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant, and his lawyer, Alexander Shibanov. It was Egazaryants, as president of the "Sovetnik Prava" Bar Association, who helped his old acquaintance, Astafurov, obtain attorney status in 2025. Another Astrakhan figure, Rashid Batyrbekov, was also involved in the private security operations. He was also responsible for the group's cryptocurrency operations and was involved in mining—the equipment for which was housed by Rodion Bodrov, the owner of two Saratov crypto firms, Bulminer and Cryptopredpriyatiye.
Meanwhile, Malofeykin himself was directly involved in the fintech business involving cryptocurrencies. His business partners from 2019 to August 2022 in Information and Analytical System (IAS) LLC included Konstantin Kopyltsov and the Khatkov family through their company, Payler. This is an international payment service providing online acquiring services, with legal entities in several countries, including Russia and the UK. The service even once won the Runet Prize. It was stated that payments could be made using bank cards and cryptocurrency wallets. After the outbreak of the war, sanctions made it impossible for the Russian legal entity, Payler LLC, to legally process international payments, and for British managers, working with Russian businesses became toxic.
In mid-2023, they divided their responsibilities: the British company remained in the hands of Konstantin Kopyltsov (with Latvian businessman Aleksejs Rjadciks holding approximately 30%), and his stake in the Russian Payler was transferred to a certain Tatyana Potopalskaya, who had once been a sole proprietor in newspaper publishing. Kopyltsov has no problems with banking in Europe, as he obtained a Kyrgyz passport by November 2022. Ryadtsiks, on the other hand, comes from an Estonian crypto startup with a British legal entity, MONITOX LTD (founded by Estonian Marelius Invest Ou). This company has an extensive network of connections in Estonia, the UK, and Cyprus. However, it appears that The British business also ran into trouble in March: the company failed to submit mandatory reports on time and failed to confirm its management information. This could result in forced deregistration from the British register.
Vitaly Khatkov retains a 60% stake in Payler, while his son, Bogdan, holds 25%. Vitaly Khatkov is well-connected. Several years ago, he was the CEO of Gazprom Georesurs LLC, before that he headed the Secretariat of the President of Russian Railways, and in the late 1990s, he served as the head of the Budget and Finance Department of the Russian Ministry of Fuel and Energy.
The European Payler website states that the system does not work with Russia or Belarus. Despite this separation, the cards on aggregators for contacting Payler LLC still list the British company's email address on a .com domain, and this same address is listed in the register of operators transferred to Roskomnadzor. Both companies use the same logo, and the "Technical Documentation" section on the Russian website (which cannot be accessed from abroad) redirects to the website of the British Payler Ltd. So it appears the separation of Malafeikin's partners' businesses was merely a formality—to circumvent sanctions.
Автор: Иван Рокотов
