Decree on sanctions blocks about UAH 250 mln of customer funds on Parimatch accounts – company

KYIV. March 13 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The president’s decree on sanctions against Parimatch LLC and a number of other companies of the Parimatch holding led to the almost complete cessation of its activities in Ukraine, CEO of Parimatch holding Maksym Liashko said at a press conference in Kyiv on Sunday.

“At night, banks began to turn off the ability to withdraw customer funds. About UAH 250 million of customer funds have been blocked, they are on the company’s settlement accounts,” he said, expressing confidence that players would be able to access their funds.

General Director of Parimatch LLC, which owns licenses for betting and online casino activities in Ukraine, Natalia Hilevych said that it concerns several tens of thousands of customers.

Liashko added that banks began to terminate relations with the company for the last two or three weeks, and state-owned banks were the first to do so.

Liashko said that the sanctions affected the main B2C companies in the holding, for which the Ukrainian market represented the “lion’s share.” According to him, the holding also has a B2B direction. (In January of this year, the holding announced the launch of a new company – GR8 Tech, which will operate in the B2B market and became the successor to Parimatch Tech).

Speaking about the impact of Ukrainian sanctions on the holding’s work in other markets, the Parimatch CEO said that the reputational blow dealt would be almost impossible to correct. However, Ukrainian sanctions do not apply to other markets and there is no wide practice of sanctions being adopted by other jurisdictions after Ukraine.

Liashko once again said that the company does not have any documents and, in general, a clear understanding of why sanctions were imposed against it. “The wording that all these companies are related to Russian assets is categorically untrue,” the CEO said, recalling that relations with the Russian market were finally severed a year ago.

With regard to taxes, he said that last year the company paid UAH 280 million in taxes due to the transition to a 2% simplified tax, while after the abolition of this possibility, more than UAH 400 million was paid in January-February of this year alone, and in March the expected payment was UAH 250-280 million and it is comparable in terms of profit.

Representatives of the company said that, based on the materials of the SBU, the Bureau of Economic Security is pursuing a case on the payment of taxes by “30-something” gambling companies, among which there is Parimatch, but there are currently no decisions on it.

Asked about whether any demands were made to the holding or whether the sanctions are an attempt to clear the market, Liashko said that “perhaps they are inclining towards something, perhaps they are clearing it for someone,” but there is no evidence. Therefore, the company does not comment on this, but will seek the lifting of sanctions.