Bill_line: Artem Lyashanov’s financial "laundromat" processing gambling mafia money

Artem Lyashanov, the true leader of LLC "Tech-Soft Atlas" (trading as "bill_line"), is attempting to use legal measures to compel an internet publication to retract reports accusing the company of financial misconduct and implicating its founder.

This is confirmed by court documents posted on the DataUA portal.

Artem Lyashanov and false accusations

«Tech-Soft Atlas» and Artem Lyashanov are suing the offending publications in parallel. The limited liability company applied to the Economic Court of Kyiv, and its actual founder to the Shevchenkivsky District Court of the capital. The consideration of the company’s claim on the merits, according to the court’s decision, is supposed to begin on January 20 this year. The court process by Lyashanov’s lawsuit starts on February 20.

Interestingly, Artem Lyashanov and «Tech-Soft Atlas» do not make any financial claims against the media. The only demand is to delete two articles placed by four internet publications on their pages. The first article is titled «The criminal case against the payment system bill_line and its director, the Belarusian Artem Lyashanov, for money laundering is not yet closed», and it appeared in July 2024. The second, titled «Artem Lyashanov and the payment system bill_line service the Russian gambling mafia», was published in September 2024.

The absence of financial claims against the media indicates that the aim of the lawsuits is not to punish the «slanderers», but to whitewash the reputation. If Artem Lyashanov and his brainchild win at least one of these two court processes, they will be able to seek either the blocking of the link addresses to the pages with compromising information or their deletion from internet search results. And not only those that became the subject of the lawsuit, but any other «negativity».

The intentions of the plaintiffs are confirmed by the absence of critical publications about them on the internet, except for the two mentioned articles. Moreover, there are grounds to believe that Artem Lyashanov and «Tech-Soft Atlas» have been actively engaged in whitewashing their reputation in Google using SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management) tools at least since 2023.

Note that the fintech company and its CEO have significant chances to win their lawsuits. Since the publications specified in the claims contain a number of inaccuracies, as well as statements whose truthfulness the defendants are unlikely to prove in court.

In particular, both publications claim that Artem Lyashanov and his company are figures in criminal proceedings № 42021100000000283 dated April 23, 2021, for tax evasion on a large scale and document forgery. However, in the court documents related to that case, Artem  Lyashanov is not mentioned at all. And LLC «Bill Line» (as «Tech-Soft Atlas» was then named) during the investigation faced the arrest of its bank accounts and property. These arrests were successfully contested by the company’s lawyers in September and October 2021, since the investigation had no claims against Lyashanov’s brainchild. For now.

The vicious connection: Artem Lyashanov and Alyona Shevtsova

Artem Lyashanov and his fintech company are by no means wrong in spending significant funds on maintaining a clean reputation. They have substantial reasons for that.

Currently, it is almost impossible to find information on all the fintech projects Artem Lyashanov has worked on. In his authorized biography, published as part of efforts to clean up the reputation in search engines, there are no specific mentions of them.

However, by comparing information from public registers with individual promotional publications, we can confidently say that approximately from 2016 to 2019, Artem Lyashanov worked as the technical director at Leogaming LLC «Leogaming Pay», which is now called «Financial Company «LEO».

Alyona Shevtsova

The founder and main beneficiary of the Financial Company «LEO» is the scandalously famous Alyona Shevtsova (formerly Degrik), the owner of a controlling stake in Ibox Bank PJSC, through which massive financial machinations were allegedly carried out. Investigators and prosecutors believe that money from illegal gambling was laundered, with Alyona Dehrik-Shevtsova playing a significant role.

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Fleeing criminal prosecution, Alyona  Shevtsova has gone underground in the UAE. From there, with the help of lawyers, she continues to attempt to close criminal cases initiated against her.

Reminder: Alyona Dehrik-Shevtsova founded the financial company «Leogaming Pay» back in 2013. Initially, Alyona’s business was not a full-fledged payment system. It was more like a gateway between players and gaming platforms. However, the enterprise rapidly grew, and by 2017, shortly after Artem Lyashanov joined «LEO», Alyona Shevtsova registered the intra-national payment system «LEO» with the National Bank, which later became international.

As she rose, Dehrik-Shevtsova not only acquired assets but also criminal cases. The online publication MIND.UA, citing data from the Ministry of Justice, reported that from 2016 to 2020, Alyona Shevtsova and her husband Yevhen Shevtsov, as well as their business partners Viktor Kapustin and Vadym Hordiyevskyi, «managed at least ten companies, many of which became figures in criminal proceedings for «Fraud», «Money laundering from criminal activities», and «Shell trading».

Artem Lyashanov, around the same period, appeared in public events and in image articles as Leogaming’s CTO or Chief Technology Officer, or technical director under Dehrik-Shevtsova.

His role, as reflected by the title, was to ensure technological processes in Shevtsova’s company, which investigators believe was involved in large-scale money laundering operations.

Specifically, Artem Lyashanov was behind the creation of a product called LeoBot. As once explained by Lyashanov’s then-boss Alyona Shevtsova, LeoBot is a chat-bot in Facebook Messenger that allows p2p transfers - instant money transfers from card to card.

As known, p2p transfers are at the core of money laundering operations using drops.

Having founded «Bill Line» LLC in March 2019, Artem Lyashanov supposedly cut ties with Shevtsova, embarking on an independent venture. But some connections remained.

Currently, a certain Yuliya  Kulchytska is listed as the accountant for Lyashanov’s company.

According to public registers, this lady once worked at Leo Partners LLC - a company within Alyona Shevtsova’s business empire.

However, there is something more significant in this story.

Artem Lyashanov and the "laundromat" of the Horban brothers

Despite the fact that, as mentioned above, no claims were made against Lyashanov and LLC «Bill Line» during the investigation of criminal case № 42021100000000283, already in October 2021, a few months after the initiation of the criminal case, the company changed its name to «Tech-Soft Atlas». The next year, in July 2022, Artem Lyashanov officially stepped down from leadership and founder roles in the company.

It is evident that this latter move was made to prevent the business from falling under sanctions due to Lyashanov’s Belarusian citizenship.

However, in 2022, 2023, and 2024, in image articles, Artem Lyashanov (spelled as such) appears as the «CEO of fintech company bill_line» (for instance, here and here).

Yet, there is no legally existing company under the name bill_line. There is a payment system with that name, for which all rights (including trademarks) belong to LLC «Tech-Soft Atlas» - a legal entity from which Artem Lyashanov withdrew in 2022. According to the registers, he has no relation to it. However, in his public statements, which no one refutes, he claims to manage it.

Even when Artem Lyashanov managed «Tech-Soft Atlas» both de facto and de jure, on June 10, 2021, the National Bank of Ukraine included his company in the Payment Infrastructure Register as a technology payment service operator. This information is presented on the concise official website of the LLC. There it is separately specified which legal entities «Tech-Soft Atlas» provides services as a technological payment service operator.

These are - LLC «Financial Company «Feniks» and LLC «Swift Garant». Both of these companies were mentioned in our investigation titled «Dangerous Connections of «Zbroyar»».

FC «Feniks» and LLC «Swift Garant» are controlled by Valeriy and Serhiy Horban - millionaires with extensive business interests - from finance to arms manufacturing.

Both Horban companies, currently serviced by Lyashanov’s «Tech-Soft Atlas», are periodically mentioned in criminal investigations concerning financial machinations in general, and servicing the flows of illegal internet casinos in particular. Sometimes together with companies from Alyona Shevtsova’s orbit.

Specifically, in case № 42017000000002925, registered on September 14, 2017, which investigated an episode of fictitious entrepreneurship and laundering of income derived from criminal activities.

As reported by the online publication «Our money» referring to investigation materials, the money laundering and withdrawal mechanism was created by Alyona Shevtsova (Dehrik) in conspiracy with her husband - at that time the head of one of the departments of the National Police Yevhen Shevtsov, and also together with the ultimate beneficiary of LLC «Pari-Match» Eduard Shvindlerman and other persons. According to investigators, cash was converted and funds obtained from organizing gambling in electronic (virtual) casinos under the «Pari-Match» brand were withdrawn through shell companies controlled by Shevtsova.

The scale of «conspirators’» earnings from Ukrainian gamblers and subsequent «laundering» was colossal: the scheme’s turnover reached 20 million UAH per day, and the total amount of legalized illegal income per year was about $350 million.

Interestingly, in case № 42021100000000283, within which «Tech-Soft Atlas»’s (then called «Bill Line») accounts were seized, one of the episodes is also related to the illegal activities of «Pari-Match». At least, that’s indicated by one of the court decisions.

Another important detail.

When Shevtsova’s business empire, built on laundering money from illegal gambling, collapsed in March 2023, a huge network of iBox self-service terminals was left "orphaned", through which gamblers transferred money to underground casinos. It turned out that the nine thousand terminals scattered across the country did not belong to Shevtsova’s iBox Bank, but to a company MetaPay LLC founded in June 2022, with a «nominal» founder Tetyana Zhyhurska.

On March 13, 2023, LLC «Swift Garant» of the Horbans, with Lyashanov’s «Tech-Soft Atlas» acting as a technological payment service operator, announced the actual absorption of the iBox terminal network. As Liga.net reported, this was done under the guise of a long-term lease.

According to the company’s history of changes, in June last year, Yevhen Rastivskyi was appointed as the director-general of «MetaPay». According to the Clarity Project database, Yevhen Rastivskyi is listed as a signatory (manager) of 218 organizations, a founder in 318, and a final beneficiary in 287.

A criminal trail follows several legal entities involving Yevhen Rastivskyi. In February 2024, he became the signatory and beneficiary of a company Renitorg LLC (formerly named «The Known Company») instead of an individual Ihor Zotko. Ihor Zotko is the nominal owner of the sanctioned online casino PIN-UP Ukraine. He was recently detained on charges of financing armed aggression against Ukraine.

When Yevhen Rastivskyi took over «MetaPay», the founder of the LLC changed as well. It became a company 5CORP LTD, registered in London on September 18, 2023, to a resident of French Polynesia named Yeuby Sohanna Aguilar Cuevas. As of the beginning of this year, 5CORP LTD is in the process of liquidation.

Виктория Яновская