The OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project) team of journalists has uncovered details about the multi-million-dollar betting business of Turkish businessman Halil Falyalı. Falyalı’s former CFO Cemil Önal told reporters that his partner from Armenia was Vigen Badalyan, who is one of the shareholders of the online gaming and betting giant Soft Construct.
According to Önal, Badalyan’s company provided software for numerous betting sites in Turkey, and Falyalı was the sponsor and supporter of the Armenian businessman’s activities in Turkey.
Badalyan’s legal team has denied Önal’s allegations.
Soft Construct LLC was established in 2014 and is 100% owned by Soft Construct Limited, a company registered in the Isle of Man, whose sole shareholder is Boston Nominees Limited, also registered in Man. In the latest annual report of Soft Construct Limited, one of the directors listed is Vigen Badalyan.
In 2020, brothers Vigen and Vahe Badalyan became shareholders in Soft Construct LLC with 50% shares each. In 2021, the company was reorganized into Soft Construct CJSC.
In addition to accepting bets, Soft Construct offers betting website and game creation services, innovative technological solutions to make the gaming industry easier to organize.
Almost everyone in Armenia knows the Vbet brand of Soft Construct. Vigen Badalyan presents the brands he created on his website. But this brand has long crossed the borders of Armenia. Vbet is represented all over the world, through offices opened in different countries. Vbet is advertised at European football matches, various concerts, and competitions.
The Vbet.com website conducts its activities through the company Radon B.V., registered in the Caribbean island state of Curacao and licensed for gambling from that country (Curacao, which is an offshore zone, is an autonomy within the Kingdom of the Netherlands), and the operator-organizer of vbet.am is the Armenian Soft Construct CJSC.
The Badalyans deny their connection with the Falyalıs
Halil Falyalı is a Turkish Cypriot businessman. On February 8, 2022, a group of armed men attacked his car. The driver, Murat Demirtaş, was killed in the car, and Falyalı, who suffered sixteen gunshot wounds, died in a Nicosia hospital.
Falyalı was a well-known figure with connections to Turkish and Turkish Cypriot officials, and thus he became the kingpin of gambling in Turkey.
The United States indicted Falyalı and his brother, Hüsnü Falyalı, on drug money laundering charges in 2015. But Falyalı has never been arrested and appears to have had no serious problems in Northern Cyprus (read OCCRP’s investigation to learn more).
OCCRP spoke with Cemil Önal, who was Falyalı’s chief financial officer from late 2013 until November 2021. He quit his job a few months before Falyalı’s murder. He is currently in a Dutch prison.
Önal recounted that Halil Falyalı and Vigen Badalyan met in 2016. According to him, Badalyan offered Falyalı thirty percent of his earnings in Turkey in exchange for not “harassing” his people. According to Önal, Badalyan’s BetConstruct, which creates and maintains betting and gambling websites in Turkey, received eighteen percent of the websites’ income every month, which was then divided 70-30 between Vigen and Halil. According to Önal, the number of BetConstruct websites in Turkey is 150-200.
“This Armenian guy sells infrastructure to the world. About 5000 sites get their infrastructure from them. From BetConstruct. Why from Armenia? The labour force in Armenia is very cheap. This man, this Vigen Badalyan is the godfather of the sector.”
Responding to OCCRP’s inquiry, Soft Construct’s legal team stated that neither Vigen Badalyan nor the company has any business relationship or financial dealings with Halil Falyalı, his family, or any of his associates. “The assertion that Falyalı provided “protection’ to BetConstruct’s clients and received preferential financial treatment is completely false and unsubstantiated.” Soft Construct said, adding, “We are unaware of any claims by Cemil Onal regarding financial arrangements, and we challenge the accuracy of these statements.”
Önal also said that Vigen Badalyan only interacted with Halil, his brother Husnu, and himself from within Falyalı’s circle by phone and Skype. He claimed that Badalyan and Husnu Falyalı were photographed together at a gaming industry exhibition in London in 2015.
In response, Soft Construct’s legal team told OCCRP that trade events are industry-specific public gatherings attended by multiple individuals: “The mere presence of an individual at an event does not imply a business relationship, and any such insinuation would be misleading and speculative. SoftConstruct has no business relationship with Husnü Falyalı. We are not aware of any direct or indirect professional dealings with him.”
Vbet’s Turkish “twin”
In 2019, the bilingual (English and Turkish) website vbettr.com was founded. By its design, it is a “twin” of vbet.am and vbet.com, but the operator-organizer of this website, which targets Turkish-speaking people and, perhaps, the population of Turkey, is not a company registered/licensed in that country, but, as in the case of vbet.com, an organization registered in Curacao and receiving a gambling license from it – IT Management Santora B.V.
In 2021, in response to our inquiry, Soft Construct reported that none of their partners are licensed in Turkey. “Some of the companies licensed in other countries (IT Management Santora B.V. is probably one of them – ed.) serve the Turkish-speaking population spread all over the world. To serve these partners and their clients, Soft Construct Armenia employs Turkish-speaking specialists, including Turkish citizens who have the right to reside and work in Armenia.”
Currently, most of the information about the vbettr.com domain is blocked, but when it was created in 2019, the name of Vigen Badalyan was indicated as its registrant, and the e-mail address was [email protected].
“Vbettr.com is not owned, managed, or operated by SoftConstruct or Vigen Badalyan. To the best of our knowledge, the website in question was not registered using the email address [email protected]. We have no record of this email being used for such a registration, and we are not aware of any connection between our systems and this domain,” Soft Construct’s legal team told OCCRP, adding, “If there are specific regulatory findings or formal decisions from Turkish authorities regarding licensing, we request that you share them for our review.”
We have evidence (see image above) not only that the person who registered vbettr.com in 2019 was Vigen Badalyan, but that its IP address is still located in the Isle of Man and registered under the name of Soft Construct Limited. In 2021, Soft Construct responded to us that although their company was founded in Armenia, it is an international company headquartered in the UK (we are talking about Soft Construct Limited, registered in the Isle of Man) and has branches in more than 15 countries.
This same IP address is used by 666 websites, including betting hosts (for example, betsensationtr.com), as well as the arleam.love website of the Armenian Sortstore LLC owned by Vigen Badalyan.
In addition, it is important to note that the director of the IT Management Santora B.V. company, which manages the Turkish-language vbettr.com, is Yevgenya Asiryan, who is a person linked to the Badalyans.
The names of Asiryan and Rudolf Poghosyan are associated with the Badalyans’ business activities.
In 2016, the company IT Technology Solutions Limited was founded in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), the sole shareholder of which is Rudolf Poghosyan, and the director is Evgenia Asiryan. The fact that this company of Poghosyan and Asiryan is related to the Badalyans’ BetConstruct brand is also clear from the documents leaked by Pandora Papers.
Rudolf Poghosyan is also the representative of Fasttoken (BVI) Inc., also registered in the BVI, and fasttoken (FTN) is the cryptocurrency created by the Badalyans. In addition, Poghosyan is the current owner of the Ukrainian company Vbet Ukraine via UCR Holding Limited, registered in Cyprus (previously, one of the owners of the Ukrainian company was the Badalyans’ Soft Construct Limited).
Moreover, Poghosyan is the executive director of the Lithuanian-registered FastEX Europe (UAB.), and the company’s shareholder is Vigen Badalyan.
Rudolf Poghosyan did not respond to Hetq’s request for comment.
Who are the Turkish citizens who visited Soft Construct?
The OCCRP team of journalists also found out that Turkish citizens Zeki Demirdeş, Egemen Mustafa Şener, and Tolga Alpaslan have repeatedly visited Armenia and have been to the Soft Construct office.
“Neither Mustafa Egemen Sener nor Zeki Demirdeş have been employees of SoftConstruct. Tolga Alpaslan was employed at Soft Construct CJSC in a limited role as a dealer manager.” Soft Construct told us.
Zeki Demirdeş
Zeki Demirdeş visited Armenia regularly from 2017 to 2023.
According to documents obtained by our colleagues Demirdeş officially worked for the Cetin Kursat company, which owns the Les Ambassadeurs Hotel & Casino founded by Falyalı in Northern Cyprus.
Journalists found out that in 2024, Demirdeş rented an apartment in Dubai belonging to Falyalı’s widow for $650,000.
Cemil Önal, a former CFO of Falyalı, told OCCRP that Demirdeş was visiting Armenia to transfer the proceeds from BetConstruct’s operations in Turkey to Vigen Badalyan.
Önal claimed that Demirdeş transferred the money in cryptocurrency using a ‘cold wallet’ (a wallet for cryptocurrency that is not connected to the internet) so that the transactions could not be traced.
“When Zeki goes to Armenia the Falyalı group collects money on behalf of the Armenians, the Armenians’ payments and Betconstruct’s payments… ultimately that money is collected by Falyalı. Falyalı needs to send that money to Armenia somehow. When Zeki goes, on many occasions, he takes bitcoins with him in his cold wallet.”
Egemen Mustafa Şener
Egemen Mustafa Şener has also been to Armenia many times. The exact purpose of his visit is not clear to us, but he was also involved in the betting and gambling business in Turkey.
Journalists found that Egemen conducted his main activities in Belarus, where he operates casinos in the President and DoubleTree by Hilton hotels in Minsk, as well as four other small casinos in different cities of Belarus. Egemen Mustafa Şener created two companies in Georgia in 2018 – Egemen LLC and Ege Bay LLC.
You can read the investigation of our Belarusian colleagues here.
Tolga Alpaslan
Tolga Alpaslan, a well-known sports dealer in Turkey, worked for Soft Construct in 2021.
At that time, we asked this company if they knew and had partnership relations with Alpaslan. Soft Construct replied: “Yes, we know Tolga Alpaslan. No, we do not have a partnership with Tolga Alpaslan. He has the right to live and work in Armenia and legally works for Soft Construct Armenia as a dealer manager.”
Cemil Önal also knows Alpaslan. According to him, Tolga was the owner of GrandBet, a betting website in Turkey. According to Önal, Alpaslan left Northern Cyprus after a Turkish police raid in 2016 against those organizing illegal gambling. After the raid and Alpaslan’s escape, Halil Falyalı took control of his share of the Turkish market.
In April 2024, Tolga Alpaslan founded Grand Vision Services LLC in Armenia. He owns fifty-one percent of the company, while Pınar Onuk owns forty-nine percent. Both are Turkish citizens. According to Armenia’s State Revenue Committee, the company, which has thirty-one employees, provides consulting services.
During a telephone conversation with Hetq, the company’s legal advisor, Karen Manukov, said that the LLC mainly provides consulting, educational, and training services. When asked whether they operate a casino, he said no, adding that they conduct online training for casino dealers and prepare advertising materials. According to Manukov, the services are provided only to foreign companies, based on relevant contracts. Mostly Armenians work at Grand Vision Services, according to Manukov, but they also involve foreigners.
Of note is that in August 2024, Alpaslan registered a company in Malta with the same name, Grand Vision Services Limited, which received a license from Curacao to organize gambling.
The Badalyans’ second ‘homeland’
Malta holds a special place in the lives and businesses of the Badalyan brothers, citizens of the Republic of Armenia. In 2016, Vahe and Vigen Badalyans became citizens of Malta. Ten more family members received citizenship with them.“For our family of twelve, we have invested about €2 million in the Maltese economy to obtain citizenship,” Vahe and Vigen Badalyans stated in their written response to our inquiry.
They have established four companies in Malta, through which they operate in different countries. They are: Soft Construct (Malta) Limited (shareholder: Soft Construct Limited, registered in the Isle of Man); V Venture Limited (formerly FC Capital (Malta) Limited, shareholders are the Badalyan brothers with 50% of the shares each); SCGO Limited (formerly Vivaro Ltd., shareholder – Soft Construct Limited, registered in the Isle of Man); Fast Shift Limited (formerly Fasttoken Limited, shareholders – the Badalyan brothers with 50% of the shares each).
Badalyans’ relations with Armenian authorities
The Badalyan brothers have always had warm relations with government authorities in Armenia. Former President Armen Sarkissian visited the Soft Construct company. Current President Vahagn Khachaturyan also visited the company when he was Minister of Agriculture. Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Khachaturyan and several ministers visited the company.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan visited Vigen Badalyan’s Fanfruit LLC, which operates in the agricultural sector, in 2024.
Vigen Badalyan has the warmest relations with the Speaker of the National Assembly Alen Simonyan. Simonyan, his wife, and ruling faction deputies Eduard Aghajanyan and Hrachya Hakobyan (the Prime Minister’s brother-in-law) spent time with Vigen Badalyan on the Greek island of Mykonos in September 2021.
The Badalyan brothers implement numerous charitable programs and make donations. Vigen Badalyan can be seen at various events he organizes, where he personally represents their brands. He meets with representatives of the art world and regularly awards athletes with his own cryptocurrency, FTN.
Since 2020, Vigen Badalyan has been the Honorary Consul of Colombia in Armenia. The consulate is located in the Caucasus hotel and restaurant complex owned by the Badalyan brothers.
Of the four bookmaker companies operating in Armenia, the largest taxpayer is Soft Construct CJSC. According to the latest data from the State Revenue Committee, in the first nine months of 2024 (January-September), Soft Construct paid 13.9 billion drams (around 33,7 million euros) in taxes to the state budget, an increase of sixty percent compared to the same period in 2023. This number made Soft Construct the eleventh largest taxpayer in the Republic of Armenia in January-September 2024.
According to the latest financial report of Soft Construct, the company’s revenue in 2023 amounted to about sixty-one billion drams (around 148 million euros), of which forty-three billion drams (around 104 million euros) is betting revenue.
In response to an OCCRP inquiry, Soft Construct’s legal team stated that Vigen Badalyan and the company operate in accordance with the laws in all jurisdictions where they do business. “We categorically reject any suggestion of involvement in unlawful activities or associations with criminal organizations,” the Badalyans’ legal team stated, adding that Soft Construct “supplies gaming software solutions, but it does not operate or control third-party businesses that use its products.”
*A gambit is a chess opening in which a player sacrifices material with the aim of achieving a subsequent positional advantage