Fifth 1xBet site closed by Ukraine regulator
The site closure occurred after KRAIL was informed that the site was organising gambling under the 1xBet brand. After the regulator sent a request to stop the illegal activity, the company responded by restricting access to the site from traffic coming from Ukrainian IP addresses.
1xBet has been illegal in Ukraine since 7 September 2022, when KRAIL cancelled the licence of the brand’s parent company TBK LLC. The regulator stated that this was because the Bureau of Economic Security had given information over to KRAIL which revealed inaccurate information in TBK’s documents.
In particular, the documents related to a section in which the business was expected to prove that “the relevant company does not act in the interests of residents of foreign states that carry out armed aggression against Ukraine, and/or actions of which create conditions for the emergence of war conflict and the use of military force against Ukraine.”
1xBet had previously found itself the subject of controversy in wartime Ukraine. On 16 August 2022, president Volodomyr Zelensky responded to a petition to prohibit the company from operating in the country, which had gathered over 26,000 signatures the day before.
1xBet Ukraine controversy
The status of 1xBet and the role of the regulator in this debate became a large source of controversy in Ukraine.
Acting head Olena Vodolashko later defended the bodys action’s in a 29 September interview with the Ukrinform news agency.
“Our goal is not to be silent, but to be effective. Therefore, we had only one public appeal during the inspection to prevent any manipulations. We appealed to a number of competent bodies – the Security Service of Ukraine, the State Security Service, the State Financial Monitoring Service.
“Thanks to this cooperation, it was possible to discover what the licensee was hiding so well. Therefore, after receiving documentary confirmations from the Bureau of Economic Security, as we stated, a decision was immediately made to cancel the licence.”