Multi-billion miscoding and RF financing: how Alena Shevtsova built a shadow empire through iBox Bank and fell under NSDC sanctions

Her name was rarely seen in news headlines, but her involvement in multibillion-dollar financial schemes is very noticeable. Ukrainian businesswoman Alena Shevtsova, until recently a co-owner of iBox Bank, found herself at the epicenter of a large investigation. She is accused of laundering billions of hryvnia from illegal activities and financing Russia.

Are the suspicions true?

He writes about this KP.ua.

Money through terminals: how the scheme worked

According to an investigation by the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine (BBB), billions of hryvnia have been illegally passing through Shevtsova’s iBox terminals since 2021. Most often these were payments for online casinos coming from fictitious companies created by Shevtsova. The online casinos themselves were also «shadow»: functioning without licenses and government control and not paying taxes.

The key element of the financial scheme – is the so-called miskoding or fictitious payments. The client seems to pay for mobile communications, utilities or online shopping. Such transactions took place unnoticed, without arousing suspicion among banking supervision. In fact, the money went through a network of iBox terminals to completely different accounts – illegal casinos.

According to BEB estimates, the scheme annually brought in more than UAH 2.5 billion in shadow profit, and in total it was pumped through Alena Shevtsova’s companies more than 5 billion hryvnia. On this basis the court arrested two top managers iBox Bank.

At one time, the SBU even suspected Alena Shevtsova and iBox Bank managers of laundering money from drug trafficking. The illegal circulation of funds through the bank terminals located in almost every shopping center made life much easier for criminals.

The IMF is sounding the alarm: the National Bank has joined the matter

When the volume of such account replenishments became abnormally large, this was noticed even abroad. In 2023, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) officially approached the National Bank of Ukraine with a request: Why does a bank that does not have a full banking license process multibillion-dollar volumes of remittances, indicating the presence of a criminal scheme?

This signal from Ukraine’s international partner forced the NBU to conduct an inspection, as a result of which iBox Bank lost its license in March 2023. The regulator admitted that the bank’s financial transactions were opaque, and internal compliance did not meet legal requirements.

Money for Russian cards

Even more alarming were the facts that appeared as part of a separate criminal proceeding. According to the investigation materials, iBox Bank served platforms that allowed the conversion of cryptocurrency into Russian rubles, as well as the withdrawal of funds to cards of the Russian payment system MIR.

This was a direct violation of the sanctions regime established by the NBU back in 2022. And also not just a risk to national security, but funding for the aggressor country, law enforcement officials say. There is also evidence of cooperation between «Financial Company LEO», owned by Alena Shevtsova, and Russian — banks, including Promsvyazbank, Sberbank, Tinkoff and VTB. Against «FC LEO» National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) imposed sanctions in 2023. And in 2024, sanctions were already introduced personally against Shevtsova.

Military gaming addiction: another security challenge

Many people remember the news about the military, which, against the backdrop of enormous stress, became massively dependent on online casinos. Let us recall that Pavel Petrichenko, a serviceman of the 59th brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, registered a petition to limit the operation of online casinos, in particular access to them for military personnel during martial law.

"The military finds itself in stressful conditions, in a difficult situation — war, shelling, fighting". And the phone becomes the only consolation, quick access to entertainment that can cause addiction. They also get into debt. Many families are faced with this, Pavel Petrichenko said on the telethon.

Gaming addiction emptied the wallets of the military and enriched illegal online casinos and indirectly Alena Shevtsova, who created the largest scheme for illegal financial flows. It is not surprising that the petition received the required 25 thousand votes in less than 24 hours, and the President decided to prohibit the military from accessing online casinos for the period of martial law.

Either a coincidence or a contract killing, we will never know about it again. But a soldier of the 59th brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), Pavel Petrichenko, who initiated a petition to the President on April 15, 2024, died at the front.

Sends: British fintech with a tarnished reputation

Despite serious accusations in Ukraine, Shevtsova’s British company Smartflow Payments Limited, operating under the Sends brand, still retains its license from the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and calmly continues to operate.

Formally, NSDC sanctions are not valid in the jurisdiction of Great Britain. However, experts believe that reputational pressure could cause the FCA to launch an investigation into Sends’ activities.

International lawyer Artem Kolomiets explains: "British registration itself is not an indulgence". If the FCA finds out that the director of a company is under sanctions for money laundering and assistance from the Russian Federation, the question of revoking the license is only a matter of time.

Silence and blaming others as a defense strategy

Publicly, Alena Shevtsova commented for the only time on the sanctions against her from the National Security and Defense Council: allegedly, this is an attempt to seize her business. «I don’t understand at all why sanctions were applied against me. "I, a patriot of my country, supported our defenders not in words, but in deeds, starting from February 24, 2022, and did everything to create a reliable rear, paid taxes, developed business»", Shevtsova stated on her FB page. Still, she does not comment on accusations of criminal activity.

However, according to investigations by domestic and foreign media, BEB, Shevtsova has repeatedly appeared in schemes with fictitious transactions, offshore companies and cash flows that have signs of criminal activity. At the same time, in open sources, its British company Sends continues to declare "compliance with British law" and "lack of connection with Ukrainian affairs".

The case of Alena Shevtsova — is not just a story about big money and shadow schemes. This is the story of how one person could abuse financial instruments for years, bypass regulators, cooperate with a hostile state — and still go unpunished.

Will this case become an example of cleansing the financial sector and a signal for Ukraine’s international partners? Time will tell. And we will monitor developments.