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- A popular casino in Minsk, Belarus thrived through sports betting during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Much of that betting didn’t actually occur because the H Casino was really a front for money laundering
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In 2020, as the world went into lockdown, Belarus’ strong-arm president Alexander Lukashenko famously declared it was business as usual in the former Soviet Bloc republic and that COVID-19 was nothing that couldn’t be cured by a few shots of vodka and a sauna.
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Suddenly, with global sports canceled, the previously obscure Belarusian Premier League took on newfound significance for gamblers as the only soccer league available to bet on anywhere.
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But Belarus’ laissez-faire attitude to the pandemic attracted another type of gambling at the then brand-new H Casino in Minsk.
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Or rather it didn’t, because much of the gambling reported by the casino didn’t actually exist. That’s according to a new investigation by journalists at the Belarusian Investigative Center (BIC), an exiled independent Belarusian media outlet.
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With lockdowns and quarantines occurring elsewhere, criminals were finding it tough to launder the proceeds of crime. Belarus, with its freedom of movement and corrupt public officials, provided the ideal solution.
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Falyalı’s Laundromat
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The H Casino opened in 2021 in Galleria Minsk, a mall owned by businessmen with ties to Russian and Belarusian elites. It quickly became the most profitable casino in the Belarusian capital.
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According to the BIC report, that may be because it was part of a sprawling money laundering network linked to Turkish Cypriot crime kingpin, Halil Falyalı, who was murdered in 2022.
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Although the casino is ostensibly wholly owned by Turkish businessman Mustafa Egemen Şener, the investigation — which was conducted in conjunction with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) – concluded that Şener was a joint partner in the business with the slain gangster.
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Falyalı owned the five-star Les Ambassadeurs Hotel & Casino in Northern Cyprus. In 2015, the US government accused him of being part of a drug trafficking operation that flooded the UK with heroin. A year later, the DOJ charged him with laundering the proceeds of narcotics sales within the US.
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From his Cyprus base, Falyalı controlled a vast illegal online gambling empire targeting Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and other countries, which generated huge amounts of dirty money.
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Money Man Sings
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BIC journalists were able to conduct extensive interviews with Falyalı’s former CFO, Cemil Önal, who is currently in prison in the Netherlands fighting extradition to Turkey, where he claims his life would be in danger.
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According to Önal, much of this dirty money was transported to the H Casino, either physically – cash smuggled by private jets – or digitally, via crypto wallets.
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The system involved establishing a huge network of bank or payment platform accounts owned by private individuals who were willing to accept payments in return for a cut of the money.
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When a player lost money on one of Falyalı’s gambling sites, the funds would go directly to the account of an individual within the network That individual would then withdraw the cash from an ATM and deliver it to an organizer. Both the account holder and the organizer would take a 5% cut, while the remaining 90% went to Falyalı.
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In this way, the network was able to move billions through thousands of accounts, according to data from a report by the Turkish financial crime investigator.
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When the money arrived at H Casino, it was reported as casino revenue, generated by bets placed by phantom gamblers. The funds were eventually sent to Dubai and plowed into luxury real estate.
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State Protection
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The operation had state protection in Belarus, according to Önal. Belarusian security officials, including former KGB and military officers, were involved in protecting the laundering racket. These allegedly included Vitaly Matys, a former security officer for President Lukashenko, who was identified by Önal as a key enabler of the operation.
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Falyalı died in a hail of bullets in February 2022, after his motorcade was ambushed by gunmen with Kalashnikovs in the village of Çatalköy, close to his home in Northern Cyprus.
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Four men with links to the Turkish underworld have been convicted of his murder, but their motive remains unclear.
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The post H Casino in Belarus Served as Money Laundering Front for Slain Turkish Gangster, Report Claims appeared first on Casino.org.
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