By Daiva Repečkaitė and Julian Bonnici
- Uri Poliavich – Soft2bet’s founder – has partly relied on myriad blacklisted casinos and sports betting sites to help build up his empire.
- Boomerang, AC Milan’s Betting Partner, operates blacklisted sites & uses Soft2bet’s services.
- A German man who lost €245,000 won a legal challenge against a blacklisted casino site.
- Malta’s Bill 55 under the microscope for shielding gambling industry from law enforcement.
Soft2bet, a gambling software provider, has connections in Malta – from Economy Minister Silvio Schembri inaugurating its offices to its global brand founder serving as one of the key speakers at the SiGMA conference in Malta. However, a cross-border investigation by Investigate Europe and its partners, including Amphora Media, has revealed that entities within Soft2bet founders’ corporate network have registered numerous blacklisted casinos and betting sites – while gambling addicts struggle to find justice.
Soft2bet’s founder, Uri Poliavich, is overseeing an empire that turned a €66.8 million profit in 2023 from Soft2bet alone and has handed him a €57.8 million dividend. Corporate documents reveal that he spent some of his wealth on real estate in Cyprus, Prague and Sofia, as well as over €1.3 million worth of cars. In Malta, Poliavich’s network has a licence to target players via Maltix Limited, owned via entities in Cyprus.
Investigate Europe and partners have revealed that company filings, website domain and trademark data show that Poliavich – named “leader of the year” at an industry summit in 2024 – has partly relied on myriad blacklisted casinos and sports betting sites to help build up his empire.
Poliavich did not personally respond to reporters’ questions, but Soft2bet denied wrongdoing. “Our operations are conducted in full adherence to all applicable laws, regulations, and licensing conditions in every jurisdiction where we are authorised to operate,” the company’s statement read.
‘Casinos stole my life’: German’s legal challenge against Soft2bet-linked sites
Felix (not his real name), a middle-aged German man struggling after a difficult divorce, found himself drawn to gambling. He took out nine loans and cancelled his pension plans to fuel his gambling addiction, and remembers losing €245,000 on a website called Wazamba. But instead of flagging potential addiction, the website granted him “VIP status”, a loyalty programme where high spenders get a personal manager.
“I spent every free minute on my mobile phone,” Felix told Investigate Europe.
“I could play and then call them to get some money back to continue playing, they always give you credit straight away,”Those who run these casinos have stolen my life.”
Investigate Europe can reveal that Wazamba is part of a vast network of blacklisted gambling sites connected to Soft2bet by corporate ownership and the UBO. In a statement sent to Investigate Europe, Soft2bet denied any wrongdoing.
Fortunately for Felix, he pursued Wazamba in the German courts. At the time, Soft2bet appears to have discreetly managed the casino via two shell corporations, Rabidi and Araxio Development. In 2022, Rabidi turned over €343 million. The registrant’s phone number for one Rabidi-created URL currently shows as Poliavich’s WhatsApp number. Both companies were based in Curaçao, the Caribbean tax haven notorious for its lax gambling regulations.
See Follow the Money investigation on Curaçao here
German judges ruled in 2023 that Rabidi, unlicensed in Germany, owed Felix all his losses back. Two years later, he is still waiting for the money, as are several other creditors.
Both Rabidi and Araxio were declared bankrupt in Curaçao following a number
of similar lawsuits. Their assets, however, were safely relocated before the judgements. What was not known at the time was their relation to Soft2bet.
Investigate Europe and its partners addressed 25 questions to Soft2bet and Poliavich. In a statement, the company said: “Soft2bet is a leading online casino and sportsbook software provider, holding various licenses worldwide. As a fully licensed and strictly regulated company, we take our compliance obligations and regulatory responsibilities with the utmost seriousness.
“We categorically deny the baseless allegations and misleading insinuations presented in your email. Any suggestion that Soft2bet engages in improper activities is entirely false, defamatory, and without merit. We reject the attempt to damage our reputation through unfounded accusations or irresponsible reporting.”
But data from Similarweb, a web traffic aggregator, show that the unauthorised websites attract millions of visits each month in Europe, with Germany providing the majority of players. And some of the blacklisted brands traced back to Soft2bet, like Wazamba, have been owned and operated by the company directly. Others were created by the group on behalf of customers as “turnkey casinos”.
Boomerang: AC Milan’s Betting Partner Operates Blacklisted Sites
Boomerang is one of the latter. It received an award at the latest SiGMA World conference.
Boomerang has been classified as unauthorised in at least six countries – including Italy, Spain and Greece. Regardless, Boomerang managed to strike a deal with AC Milan in July 2024 as its official regional betting partner in Europe. Boomerang has been blacklisted by Italian authorities since at least March 2025.
In spite of being blacklisted, Its URLs recorded 17 million visits in the last three months of 2024: 3 million came from Spain, 1 million from Greece and nearly 500,000 from Italy. Over 7 million visits were from Germany, where Boomerang doesn’t have the necessary licences.
The trademark’s owners are four Russian nationals who publicly acknowledge their connections to Boomerang and other betting sites. Corporate filings show they live in Cyprus and Berlin, where the two also set up a real estate company.
Investigate Europe tried to contact them via Boomerang, but they did not reply to requests for comments. AC Milan, who is in a partnership with Boomerang, did not answer questions either.
As well as web traffic data, proof that blacklisted websites tied to Soft2bet are vying for European gamblers can be found in the group’s marketing materials.
The Curaçao licence which Soft2bet casinos held did not allow them to target a European audience. But it did afford them much-needed secrecy.
Authorities have blamed the two Curaçao shell companies without linking them to Soft2bet. Both Rabidi and Araxio received court judgments in Austria and Germany ordering them to reimburse players. In Spain, Rabidi received a €5 million fine in connection to 25 “allegedly illegal” casinos. The Spanish regulator said the penalty remains to be paid.
Evidence that Soft2bet’s UBO’s hand is behind them lies in Cyprus, where the company keeps its top holdings. Soft2bet founder and CEO Poliavich controlled Araxio directly via Outono Ltd, a Cypriot entity which served as Soft2bet’s top holding until recently. Rabidi belonged to a close partner, Denys Butko, a Ukrainian national living on the Mediterranean island.
The two men rarely appear together in official paperwork, but their friendship is obvious. Social media pictures show them spending time together with family in Ukraine. Poliavich even picked Butko as the director of one entity he used to buy a $475,000 flat in Panama City.
Butko did not reply to requests for comments.
Between 2017 and 2024, Soft2bet’s founder and Butko used Araxio and Rabidi to establish nearly 550 casino URLs. Company accounts suggest Araxio owned software rights, and Rabidi was a gambling operator.
From 2021, as Rabidi and Araxio kept popping up on European blacklists, Poliavich called in Butko to reorganise his affairs. Butko’s Cypriot outfit, Interpava, played a key role in the reshuffle.
First, Interpava, which already owned Rabidi, took over Araxio while its software rights were moved to another Poliavich undertaking. Then, Interpava incorporated a third Curacao vehicle, which assumed Rabidi’s casino operations and local gambling authorities granted it a licence.
Interpava’s shares were finally transferred to another collaborator working with Butko. By the time Araxio and Rabidi were declared bankrupt in 2023 and 2024, respectively, the two entities were worthless. Direct ties to Poliavich and Butko were severed.
RightNow, a German legal firm helping players recover money, looked into various claims against Araxio and Rabidi, but could not find out who was behind them. “Basically there’s no good way to track them and get the money which is owed to customers based in Europe,” says Benedikt Quarch, co-founder of RightNow. “It is crazy that those big companies can just close and reopen legal entities and move funds around.”
In 2024, the network’s structures were further opacified. More shell corporations were formed in the Marshall Islands. Casino trademarks like Wazamba or House of Spades, initially held by Cypriot entities, were shifted to a Dubai post box company.
A majority of the blacklisted websites that Investigate Europe linked to Soft2bet also seemingly left Curaçao. They now use a gambling licence from Anjouan, an island in the Indian Ocean which has grown as another tax haven for virtual casinos. Just like Curaçao before, a permit from Anjouan doesn’t allow casinos to access most European markets legally.
Due to the separation of corporate entities and their owners’ assets, the previously fined or convicted companies do not appear to affect the workings of the other nodes in Poliavich’s network. The Soft2bet group is gearing up to launch its Elabet brand in Greece, having gained the necessary licence there, even though 54 of its other websites feature on the country’s blacklist. The company also recently secured regulatory approval in Spain, despite Rabidi’s unpaid fine there.
Malta’s Bill 55 under the microscope for shielding gambling industry’s illegalities
The issue surrounding Maltese-licensed operators and their unauthorised operations has brought renewed focus on the controversial Bill 55, which critics argue effectively nullifies court verdicts elsewhere in the European Union to protect themselves from potentially having to pay out millions in legal claims.
Under a law known as Bill 55, Maltese courts can “refuse recognition and, or enforcement” of any foreign judgment involving companies registered on the island, namely the gambling industry.
The law effectively shields owners of brands from judgements handed down abroad, of which there are an increasing number.
Lawyers told Investigate Europe that Bill 55, described by one as a “sledgehammer”, violates EU law and is preventing thousands of successful claims issued in European courts from being paid out.
Given the stakes, pressure is now mounting on the European Commission to challenge the Maltese regulation, in place since 2023, that is thwarting claimants from recouping their losses. Austria’s highest court, meanwhile, has urged the European Court of Justice to intervene and rule whether the Maltese regulation breaches EU law.
There are around 50,000 ongoing claims in Germany and Austria alone, lawyers told Investigate Europe. The law firm G&L Legal in Vienna is itself dealing with over 15,000 cases, many concerning industry heavyweights in Malta.
The Maltese government and gambling regulator refused to be interviewed for this story.
Operators argue that as they are already registered in one member state – Malta – they have the right to operate in all EU states. In its annual report, Flutter, one of the internationally fined gambling operators, said it “strongly disputes” the claims made in Austria and Germany. It said its Maltese entities are “compliant in accordance with EU law” and can offer services across jurisdictions. National laws say the opposite: a company must be licensed domestically and pay taxes to be able to operate.
Legislation in Malta, like in other countries, also offers the so-called corporate veil between the shareholders of a company and the company. By law, shareholders are generally not personally responsible for the company’s debts beyond their investment in the company, except when there is evidence of fraud, improper conduct or defrauding of creditors, but that is to be determined by courts, and courts tend to be cautious with lifting the corporate veil.
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