A leak from the database of Curaçao’s gambling regulator has given the first inside look at how the 1xBet business is put together. The licence for the main website is now held by Caecus N.V., a company in Curaçao. It is wholly owned by Lutum Limited, a Cypriot company, and the rights to the brand lead through a chain of firms to Navasard, also Cypriot. Forbes has linked Navasard to Roman Semiokhin. In 2025 Caecus took in €657.9 million and passed almost all of it to “related parties”. No corporate income tax was charged. Semiokhin, who is on Russia’s international wanted list, has spent all these years living quietly in Limassol on a Cypriot passport. CDN is publishing its second article about Roman Semiokhin. The first came out in July.
In late 2025 the Berlin-based researcher Lilith Wittmann got into the internal database of the Curaçao Gaming Authority, the body that licenses online casinos and bookmakers. Applications, passports, tax returns and financial statements for about 650 companies and 800 of their owners ended up in the open CasinoSecrets database. The Dutch outlet Follow the Money was the first to go through the files. CDN has studied the file on the company that now runs 1xbet.com.
One platform, dozens of brands
First, a word on how this market works. An online bookmaker needs a website, software, casino games, a betting line and analysts who follow matches in real time. Running all of that in-house costs a fortune. So nearly every operator buys a ready-made platform from a big supplier such as SoftSwiss, EveryMatrix or Digitain. Those suppliers usually work legally: they open offices, get licences, certify their software and check their clients.
Semiokhin built a platform of his own, and 1xBet is simply the best-known brand on it. As regulators around the world began to tighten the rules, dozens of brands that are formally independent grew up around 1xBet: 22bet, BetWinner, Melbet, Megapari, Paripesa, Linebet, 888starz and others. The working list has 47 of them, and all show signs of a shared platform. FTM journalists wrote a script, compared the code of sites on blacklists in different countries and found more than fifty “networks”. The names and designs differ. The files are the same.
Part of the working list of projects on the “1x” platform: 1xBet alone is declared in more than 60 countries and regions, from Azerbaijan and Angola to Japan
In an interview with Forbes, Semiokhin claimed he sells technology on a franchise basis and that each local partner decides for itself how to work and which licence to get. By his account there are more than two hundred such partners. The leaked documents tell a different story.
€657.9 million in, €653.3 million out
Caecus N.V. was registered in Curaçao on 5 May 2023 at Chuchubiweg 17 in Willemstad. Acom Latin America, 1xBet’s previous letterbox company, was listed at the same address. Before that came 1xCorp N.V., which a Curaçao court declared bankrupt on a claim brought by players who had not been paid their winnings. Those players have still not received a cent. The sole director of Caecus is the trust office Capital Trust Corporation, the same firm that represented Acom.
Register of directors of Caecus N.V.: the sole director is Capital Trust Corporation N.V., appointed on 5 May 2023. A document from the leaked Curaçao regulator database
For 2025 Caecus reported €657.9 million in revenue and €653.6 million in costs. Of those costs, €653.3 million went to “related parties”. An unnamed “company under common control” received €342 million for “management services” and another €304.6 million for “services received”. About €6.6 million went to three Cypriot subsidiaries of Caecus: Evrianassa, Exidna and Kassifoni. The accounts show no salary costs. There is no cash line on the balance sheet either. Profit on paper was €4.2 million; corporate income tax was zero.
Caecus N.V. statement of profit or loss for 2025: revenue of €657.9 million, net profit of €4.2 million
Note 9 to the Caecus accounts for 2025: €342 million in “manager fees” and €304.6 million in “services received”
For a franchise, the sums are odd. Normally the money stays with the partner, who pays wages and taxes and hands the brand owner a percentage. Caecus pays €100,000 a month for the brand, and for the first year it used the brand for free. That is about 0.2% of revenue. Everything else goes somewhere else.
The reports also contradict each other. Revenue for 2023 is €230.5 million in the first report and €272.3 million in the next one. Profit for the same year went the other way, shrinking from €53.1 million to €36.8 million. The first report calls itself audited, yet there is no auditor’s opinion in the files.
The trustee and the beneficiary
Now to the owners. All shares in Caecus belong to Lutum Limited in Cyprus. Since 9 September 2021 Lutum has been registered to Olena Hanych. On the same day Hanych signed a notarised declaration of trust. It states that she holds the shares for the benefit of a Ukrainian citizen, Ihor Hniedash, and votes and receives dividends only on his instructions. In the regulator’s documents Hniedash is listed as the ultimate beneficial owner and head of Caecus.
Ownership chart of Caecus N.V., signed by Capital Trust Corporation on 15 May 2023: Hniedash (ultimate owner) → Hanych (trustee) → Lutum Limited (Cyprus) → Caecus N.V. (Curaçao)
Declaration of trust of 9 September 2021: Hanych holds 1,000 shares of Lutum Limited for the benefit of Hniedash. Passport details redacted by CDN
Hanych turns up in almost every “generation” of 1xBet structures. In 2022 the Cypriot register listed her as a director of Exinvest, Bonnal and Klafkaniro. These were the very companies the 1xBet website named at the time as its owners and operators. The Dutch regulator fined Exinvest, together with 1xCorp, €400,000. In 2023 Hanych signed the 1xBet brand contract with Caecus on behalf of Next Generation IT Solutions of Hong Kong. In 2024 the regulator’s database recorded her as the “founder” of Caecus.
Money reaches Hniedash through the same companies. According to his Cypriot tax returns, he received €18.2 million in dividends in 2022–2023. The payers were Lutum, Next Generation, Chigwell Limited and Futurity Technologies. Hanych appears in three of them, and they account for about 94% of the total. Next Generation paid Hniedash €8 million in dividends for 2023. Yet in its first year Caecus paid Next Generation nothing for the brand. Where Next Generation found that kind of money, the documents do not say.
Hniedash’s tax return for 2023, “Dividends” section: Chigwell, Next Generation (twice) and Futurity, €8,582,154 in total
In Cyprus, dividends are exempt from income tax, and judging by the returns, no defence contribution was paid either. That is how it works for tax residents with non-dom status. The only real payment is €4,770 a year to the national health system, which is the maximum contribution. A man receives millions from a business that is banned across most of Europe and legally pays almost nothing in Cyprus. His returns are prepared by Arosal Audit, an audit firm in Nicosia, and its address is given in the returns as the taxpayer’s address. Hniedash earns interest at only one bank, Armbusinessbank in Armenia, later renamed Amio Bank. The interest comes to a few dozen euros. Where the millions actually landed, the returns do not show.
Hniedash’s return for 2022, “Interest receivable” section: Armbusinessbank, €39 for the year. Account numbers redacted by CDN
Return for 2023: the same bank, now called Amio Bank CJSC, €6 in interest
The Curaçao regulator saw the gaps in the file. The documents say so plainly: Lutum’s share register is missing, and so is its list of directors. The assessors suspected that 1xBet had “multiple owners”. They asked Hniedash to describe his business ties with the three founders of 1xBet: Semiokhin, Dmitry Kazorin and Sergey Karshkov. They got no answers but issued the licence in 2024 anyway. On 14 August 2026 it was made final.
The trail to Semiokhin
Semiokhin’s signature does not appear in the Caecus documents. The trail to him runs through the brand. Caecus uses the 1xbet mark under a sublicence from Next Generation. Next Generation got its rights under a licence from Navasard Limited, a Cypriot company, on 14 June 2021. The Caecus contract ends automatically if the Navasard licence ends. According to Forbes, Navasard belonged to Troodos of Gibraltar, which was a “related party” of the Cypriot company Magandini. A certificate from the Cypriot Ministry of Finance filed with the Moscow Arbitration Court named Semiokhin as Magandini’s beneficial owner. Who owns Navasard today cannot be established from the documents available.
Sublicence agreement for the 1xBet and 1xCasino trademarks and the 1xbet.com and 1xcasino.com domains: the parties are Next Generation IT Solutions (Hong Kong) and Caecus N.V. (Curaçao)
Clause 11.3 of the agreement: it ends automatically if the licence from the Cypriot Navasard Limited, signed on 14 June 2021, comes to an end
The most direct evidence against Semiokhin is in Russia, where he started out. In 2021 the Investigative Committee in Bryansk named him, Kazorin and Karshkov as the organisers of an illegal gambling business run through 1xBet. Investigators say that between October 2014 and May 2019 they made more than 63 billion roubles. All three were put on the international wanted list. Karshkov died in Switzerland in 2023. The only person convicted was Olesya Mospanova, who managed the Bukmeker Pab chain of betting shops in Bryansk. She got three years in a penal colony. The court found that she took cash from customers and credited it to their accounts on 1xbet.com. In the verdict the organisers’ names are hidden behind “other persons No. 1, 2 and 3”. According to the court, “person No. 2” registered companies abroad in order to obtain licences. That is exactly what the Curaçao leak shows.
In May 2024 the Moscow Arbitration Court examined the legal Russian brand 1xStavka (Bukmeker Pab LLC, later SR LLC). An expert report found the 1xstavka.ru and 1xbet.com websites identical. The company’s director testified that he had been hired by Semiokhin. The court also traced the changes of ownership. Semiokhin’s stake went to Erlich Limited in Cyprus, and in June 2022 Erlich sold 87.9% of the company to Konstruktor JSC, whose founder is A. G. Semiokhina. The price was 100,000 roubles. SR’s net profit for 2021 was 7.76 billion roubles. The court concluded that the company was part of a fragmented online business controlled by its beneficial owner, R. A. Semiokhin.
The same Erlich, according to Forbes, is linked to Navasard, which holds the 1xBet trademarks. One and the same Cypriot offshore company turns up both in the Russian 1xStavka and in the chain of rights to the international brand.
Why it is a Cypriot story
In this story Cyprus is more than the place where Semiokhin lives. The owners are here, the companies are here, the paperwork is here. Lutum, Navasard, Erlich, Chigwell and the three Caecus subsidiaries are all Cypriot. Since 2021 the Cypriot company A-One Data Limited has collected operators’ “security deposits” for Data Global, which handled licensing for Cyberluck, 1xBet’s now-bankrupt licensor. A Cypriot auditor files the owner’s tax returns. In July CDN reported on how Semiokhin and his partners obtained Cypriot “golden passports” and why they have still not been stripped of citizenship.
This week, on 2–5 November, Rome is hosting SiGMA World, one of the biggest gambling industry shows. In the official catalogue of exhibitors, 1xbet, 1xslots, BetWinner, 22Bet and Linebet each have their own entry. For the organisers they are five different companies. In its profile 1xBet claims an Italian licence; CDN found no confirmation of it. As far back as 2017 Italy’s ADM agency said that 1xBet had no concession and was operating outside the law. In the same show’s list of past speakers is 1xBet’s “strategic adviser” Simon Westbury, and next to him the heads of both Cypriot gambling regulators, Pieris Chourides and Panagiotis Trisokkas.
The leak handed the Cypriot authorities what usually takes years to dig up: names, dates, signatures, sums, banks. Has anyone checked Lutum, Chigwell, Navasard and the Cypriot subsidiaries of Caecus? Where do the hundreds of millions paid to the “company under common control” for “management services” end up? And why does a man whom Russia considers the organiser of a 63-billion-rouble gambling business remain a citizen of the European Union? There are no answers yet.
Read also on CDN:
A Man in Limassol: One of the World’s Most Wanted Illegal Betting Bosses Is Hiding in Cyprus