Over the past year and a half, so many scandals have arisen around “Sense Bank” that it is practically impossible to briefly describe them.
Letʼs start with the latest one. Almost two months ago, NABU exposed an official in the Office of the President (OP) Iryna Mudra, and published a wiretap of her conversations. Several things emerged from this wiretap.
- Firstly, after nationalization, the bank was informally managed by businessman Tymur Mindich, and after his escape at the end of 2025, by employees of the Presidentʼs Office.
- Secondly, there are "serious flows" in the bank to which can potentially be "linked".
- Thirdly, the bank was blackmailed by two people: they offered the bank managers "coverage" and in return promised that they "would not wrack the bank".
In the wiretap, Iryna Mudra names two people who came to the bank managers with proposals for a “coverage”.
“At first, Davyd came, and then — ***”, she says.
The second person’s name is cut out, but the video reads: “the head of the VRU committee”. We can assume that this refers to the head of the “Servant of the People” faction Davyd Arakhamia and the head of the finance committee Danylo Hetmantsev.
In addition to the fact that both belong to the same faction, Davyd Arakhamia and Danylo Hetmantsev have a common background.
It is well known that they are both connected with the gambling market — both personal and professional connections. Both of them were the initiators and authors of several reforms of this market. The gambling market itself has been radically transformed over the past six years, and more than once.
All this time, “Sense Bank” held (and still holds) a leading position in the market for acquiring gambling services. Currently, online casinos conduct hundreds of billions of hryvnias per year of "white" payments and, possibly, some part of the "gray" ones through this bank.
Total amounts of replenishment of gambling accounts and payouts to players are displayed. Data: Babel calculations based on monthly market data for 2023-2026 (NBU).
«Babel'»
The recent scandals surrounding “Sense Bank” are developing precisely in this context. When informal bank supervisors talk about “serious flows” during wiretaps, they most likely mean the turnover of the gambling business.
Therefore, in order to understand the “Sense Bank” case and draw conclusions from it, we will have to recall the recent history of the gambling business.
Currently, 18 online casino operators operate legally in Ukraine. Millions of people “spin slots” in them. In 2025, online casinos earned a profit of UAH 54 billion and paid about UAH 15 billion in taxes. These amounts are comparable to the money that the state budget receives from large international loans (for example, from IMF).
Since the beginning of the Great War, the gambling market has been transformed more than once. It has experienced several major "purges" and a radical reform of the regulatory body.
Between two such purges, in 2023-2024, the main payment operator for online casinos was the company “Diamond Pay”. It worked through several banks, including Sense Bank. During the second "cleaning", it was found to have ties to Russia, and the state took away its license.
The gambling market in Ukraine is historically linked to Russia. Just seven or six years ago, it was very visible (including on the streets of cities), but its turnover was in the shadows. Online casinos, in particular, from and to Russia, made their payments through an extensive financial system.
Cash from players came to it through hundreds of thousands of payment terminals throughout the country. Then, in non-cash form, they passed through banks (“Ibox Bank”, “Concord”, “Ukrgasbank”, and others) and international payment systems, the largest of which was called LEO.
The interface of the "iBox" payment terminal in 2018: through the first screen you can top up accounts at the online casinos "PariMatch", "1xbet", and "Favorit". Casino of the "PariMatch" network in 2019. Before the legalization of the market, such networks were disguised as "distributors of the state lottery".
bookkeeper.kiev.ua
The reform of the gambling business in 2020 was one of the first to be carried out by the "Servants of the People" when they received an absolute majority in parliament.
One of the engines of the reform was the head of the faction Davyd Arakhamia. As he himself and his party colleagues said, Davyd Arakhamia was familiar with the manager of the casino at the “Premier Palace Hotel”, whose name was Boris Baum. Arakhamia asked Baum to help.
As a result, Baum played the role of an informal communicator between the Office of the President, the gambling market, and the MPs who were writing a bill on market regulation. The bill passed through the Finance Committee, which was then and is still headed by Danylo Hetmantsev. He himself abstained from working on the bill — he said that he had a conflict of interest.
In the summer of 2020, the parliament legalized the gambling business. It was to be regulated by a special commission — GRCL. It issued licenses and ensured that online casinos took their turnover out of the shadows. Boris Baum nominated himself as the head of the commission, but then withdrew it.
After legalization, “PariMatch” became the most visible brand on the market. In the capitalʼs “Parkovy” Exhibition and Convention Center — in the same building where the "Servants of the People" held political and economic forums — it opened a casino and a “PM Hall” concert hall.
May Musk performs at the "PM Hall" concert hall, located in the "Parkovy" Exhibition and Convention Center. The event was organized by "LeoGaming" and "Ibox" Bank. May Musk and "LeoGaming" co-owner Olena Shevtsova give a joint interview to the "1+1" channel at the "Parkovy" Exhibition and Convention Center, November 7, 2021, Kyiv.
PM Hall; LEO
The gambling market began to be seriously regulated after the start of the Great War.
The state began to look for money for the budget, which the war was rapidly depleting. The authorities turned their attention to online casinos. The payment systems associated with them, and the banks that serviced them, and uncovered a tax evasion scheme called "miscoding".
In January and March 2023, NBU fined the state-owned “Ukrgasbank” and the (then) private “Sense Bank”, which made hidden payments for the gambling business, tens of millions of hryvnias.
At the same time, law enforcement agencies began to clean up the market of structures associated with Russia. In March 2023, President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed sanctions on groups of companies operating under the brands “1xbet”, “PariMatch”, and “LEO”.
NBU liquidated “Ibox Bank”, which belonged to the same businessmen as the “LEO” payment system, and a few months later took away the license from “Concord Bank”. After that, the tax service warned the gambling companies that they were calculating taxes incorrectly, and by the end of the year it had assessed them UAH 50 billion in fines.
This was the first wave of “cleaning” in the gambling market. The second wave fell on the end of 2024 — the beginning of 2025. During this period, the parliament updated the law on gambling. Now online casinos could only operate through banks. There is no more payment systems. The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) detained the head of GRCL.
After that, in March 2025, the commission was liquidated. Instead, a new regulator was created — the state agency “PlayCity”. It worked under the auspices of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, which at that time was headed by Mykhailo Fedorov.
“PlayCity” is still operating today.
The first roles in the gambling market were played by the payment system "Diamond Pay" between two “cleanings” of this market.
It worked really actively for a little over a year, until the National Bank revoked its license. The details of its work are known to Babel from documents of four different departments that directly studied its activities. Part of these documents (decisions of courts of various instances) are contained in open registers.
At the end of 2022 (i.e. on the eve of the liquidation of “LEO” and “Ibox Bank”), the volume of payments through it increased sharply. “Diamond Pay” served (accepted playersʼ bets and paid out winnings) seven large online casinos.
In 2023, its turnover increased more than tenfold, and in its segment it became practically a monopolist. Tens of billions of hryvnias began to pass through it.
“Diamond Pay” provided special services to several large casinos. Through it, online casinos made payments to the cards of so-called “drops”, i.e. low-income people (usually unemployed or students), who then transferred money further along the chain.
Payment chains between “drops” were used by casino to hide turnover, to buy cryptocurrency and to take it abroad, as well as to pay employees of the right companies “gray” salaries, and simply to cover their tracks. “Diamond Pay” itself underestimated its profits dozens of times in order to evade taxes.
Such activity in the gambling market did not go unnoticed. In November 2023 and April 2024, SBI began investigating several cases involving “Diamond Pay”. The first involved tax officials helping “Diamond Pay” and several other payment companies evade taxes. The second involved “Diamond Pay” helping the Russian casino PIN-UP recover money from accounts that SBI had just seized.
The National Bank also began to study the work of “Diamond Pay”. At the end of April 2024, it sent information about suspicious transactions in this system to three different structures: the State Financial Monitoring Service, the State Tax Service, and the Bureau of Economic Security (BES).
At first, NBU just fined “Diamond Pay” UAH 14 million. But in mid-June 2024, the National Bank received information that the payment system was registered for Russians, and by the end of the same month, NBU had withdrawn its license. The money in the payment systemʼs accounts in various banks "froze".
After that, “Diamond Pay” (and the online casinos it served) tried to save this money.
The scheme they used looked pretty regular. In such cases, you need to sue your company on behalf of another company, lose (essentially lose to yourself) and — by court decision — transfer the money from the blocked “pocket” to the pocket of the company that “filed the lawsuit” (which is actually yours too).
In August and September, five different trading and advertising companies filed lawsuits against “Diamond Pay” — they demanded that they transfer about UAH 300 million for various services.
The lawsuits were considered by a court located in Kurakhove. The court satisfied these lawsuits. Then, a bailiff turned to the banks with a demand to transfer the money to his account at “Oschadbank”. Banks have several ways to stop a suspicious payment, but by law they are obliged to comply with the bailiffʼs demands. Therefore, they transferred “Diamond Pay” money from its current accounts to him, and the bailiff then transferred it further.
“Diamond Pay” held money in accounts at at least five different banks, large and small. With the help of this court order, it was able to withdraw money from two banks to a bailiffʼs account and then "disperse" it in small payments to dozens of companies:
- UAH 54 million from “Sense Bank” (in August 2024);
- UAH 73 million from “Europrombank” (in October 2024);
- “Diamond Pay” withdrawn another UAH 86 million from “MTB Bank” to the bailiff (in November 2024). Although, “Oschadbank” (which had been servicing the bailiff all this time) blocked this transfer and moved this money to a special account.
The payment system kept its own money in current accounts in banks, and the playersʼ money in settlement accounts. With the help of a court decision in Kurakhove, “Diamond Pay” was able to withdraw only money from current accounts.
The playersʼ money stored in settlement accounts did not actually belong to the payment system, so it could not be withdrawn by claims of the “Diamond Pay” contractors or creditors. In order to try to withdraw the playersʼ money, another lawsuit had to be filed.
In December 2024, the “Cosmolot” casino directly sued “Diamond Pay” for UAH 677 million in another court — the Commercial Court of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Having received a decision for the entire amount, “Cosmolot” began to extort money from individual banks.
Almost a year later, in October 2025, it demanded UAH 103 million be transferred to it from an account at “Sense Bank”. The bank began to sue. The lawsuit for this money went through a chain to the Supreme Court and is being considered there right now.
This story can be described as briefly as possible as follows: due 2024, the gambling market played catch-up with law enforcement officers, and — rather — lost.
SBI was the first to enter the race — it opened its case back in November 2023. Then the National Bank joined in. It analyzed the “Diamond Pay” operations, suspected them of “gray” schemes, and at the end of April 2024 warned the tax service, the State Financial Monitoring Service, and BES about this. It also fined more than 10 banks a total of a quarter of a billion hryvnias.
To fight “drops”, the National Bank introduced a limit on transfers between cards. With its help, BES exposed a network of illegal processing centers. This network used the card accounts of thousands of “drops” to service the gambling business.
By mid-2024, the “Diamond Pay” license was revoked. In October, NABU opened its case — the Bureau investigated how judges helped “Diamond Pay” withdraw money.
Illegal processing center. Such centers operated in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Zhytomyr, Kremenchuk, and Kryvyi Rih, March 2025. Drop cards from various banks that were used in the processing center.
At the same time (i.e. the same year), the parliament took up the gambling market.
It was obvious that a new reform was due in the market. It was designed by Danylo Hetmantsev’s financial committee with the help of the NBU employees. Judging by public statements, it was a well-coordinated team effort.
“We highly appreciate the professionalism of the National Bank team. It is always a pleasure to work with the National Bank,” Danylo Hetmantsev said at a committee meeting in July 2024 (which was dedicated, in particular, to the gambling market).
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is important for us to feel the trust of the parliament, which is then converted into high-quality laws,” the NBU Chairman Andriy Pyshny replied.
In December, the parliament updated the law on gambling. A new regulator appeared in the market — “PlayCity” instead of GRCL. Payment systems could no longer serve the "gambling business", only banks.
As a result, the gambling business began to pay an order of magnitude more taxes. As before, online casinos still partially operate “in the shadows” (using illegal “mirror sites”).
Although, if we compare the state of the gambling market before and after the reform, as well as its contributions to the budget, we can conclude that the state has taken several serious steps forward.
What can be said about “Sense Bank” in the context of the gambling market?
It occupied and occupies a significant share in this market. Sharp changes in the market were noticeably reflected in the "white" flows of money that passed through the bank.
“Sense Bank” share in the online casino services market in 2023-2024. Data: Babel calculations based on monthly market data for 2023-2026 (NBU).
«Babel'»
Even before nationalization in 2023, it participated in the “miscoding” scheme (for which it was heavily fined). Can we say that after nationalization, it behaved exceptionally suspiciously in matters related to gambling business operations?
Judging by the information we have provided above, it is likely not. At the same time — of course — it cannot be said that it behaved impeccably.
It was one of the three banks that made payments in 2024, when the gambling business was saving its money from law enforcement. At the same time, it was complying with a court decision (but extremely dubious), and the smallest amount was withdrawn from it.
The gambling business also used accounts at “Sense Bank” for gray schemes, such as for “drop” networks. In this scheme, “Sense Bank” was one of a dozen banks, where (in addition to it) such large banks as “Privat”, “FUIB” and “Ukrgasbank” ended up.
Finally, during the latest corruption scandal, “Sense Bank” was accused of undercharging gambling businesses. Since the summer of this year, Danylo Hetmantsev has been constantly talking and writing about this. From a supporter of the National Bank team, he has turned into its most implacable critic.
Now Danylo Hetmantsev accuses the head of NBU Andriy Pyshny of NBU “turning a blind eye to [...] illegal payments [from the gambling business]” and of “covering up” a criminal group that “drives gamblers to ʼSense Bankʼ and then dictates terms to them”. Due to the latest scandal surrounding the bank, he demanded Andriy Pyshny’s resignation.
- What is the point of Danylo Hetmantsevʼs accusations?
- Was the “Sense Bank” commission for the gambling business really underestimated?
- What does the National Bank have to do with it?
All these questions are inextricably linked to the work of the “Sense Bank” supervisory board. To answer them, it is necessary to analyze another story — how in 2023 the National Bank and the government nationalized “Sense Bank” (and formed a supervisory board in it).
The next article of our series will be devoted to this.