SoftSwiss, Ivan Montik, and the FSB: The unseen face of Eastern European gambling
However, there is one massive sector of the gambling industry that remains beyond the reach of Ukrainian regulatory authorities – online casinos operating under licenses from Malta, Curaçao, Nigeria, and other similar nations, while attracting money from across the globe. The question of who owns these casinos and how to regulate them is a challenge not just for Ukraine, but for far more advanced countries as well.
An example is the so-called SoftSwiss ecosystem, owned by Belarusian citizen Ivan Montik. This company offers a turnkey online casino development service for all interested parties. It provides maintenance for these casinos, acting as a supplier of game slots and a games aggregator for both legal and illegal casinos.
Ivan Montik calls himself an opponent of the Belarusian regime, which is why he fled Belarus. SoftSwiss is registered in Malta, where it had to relocate from Belarus. However, the Belarusian LLC «Softswiss» was liquidated in 2017, and SoftSwiss appeared in Malta only in 2022. Where the firm operated – and it did not cease operations – for five whole years, is unknown. And the registration date coincides suspiciously with the beginning of the ousting of the Russian gambling business from Ukraine.
As can be seen from the screenshot of registration data, a company named Stable Aggregator Limited operates under the SoftSwiss brand. The ownership and relationship structure is very complex, and most of the founders are hidden behind the same Maltese offshore accounts. But that’s not all – SoftSwiss holds a Malta license MGA/B2B/942/2022 for providing gaming services. Thus, when Ivan Montik says that his company «develops casino software», he is only telling part of the truth. SoftSwiss, or rather Stable Aggregator Limited also provides gaming services. In other words, it is a full-fledged casino.
Returning to the ownership structure of Stable Aggregator Limited (i.e., SoftSwiss) – the question arises whether Ivan Montik is its owner. At least, his name does not appear in the ownership structure. Of course, it is possible that he owns a part in some offshore founder of Stable Aggregator Limited or one or several of them. But neither confirming nor refuting this assertion is possible. Offshores reliably hide their owners.
But at least, Ivan Montik positions himself as the owner of SoftSwiss. Although this claim is doubtful, especially given several facts that he avoids mentioning in his interviews. Several messages have appeared online that behind SoftSwiss is Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg. In 2021, he allegedly acquired 50% of Stable Aggregator Limited. But, as already mentioned, Stable Aggregator Limited was registered only in 2022. Although it is quite possible that Rotenberg’s name surfaced during the preparation for registration.
Therefore, the option of Rotenberg’s involvement in the ownership structure of the company Stable Aggregator Limited, operating under the SoftSwiss brand, cannot be either confirmed or refuted. The fact that Rotenberg is indeed associated with SoftSwiss is supported by the tendency of Russian capital to favor Cypriot jurisdiction. Indirectly, the involvement of Russians (not necessarily Rotenberg) in SoftSwiss is confirmed by the complex ownership structure of Stable Aggregator Limited. Russians also love such things, doing their best to confuse any possible investigation into their business outside Russia.
Another indirect confirmation that Ivan Montik is not an independent figure is that ownership structure itself. Because if you take the claims about SoftSwiss and all that Ivan Montik says about himself, then it raises doubt that he managed to create such a complex registration scheme. That’s not his «forte», he knows how to work in the virtual world, but not in the real one. Also, the question arises – if you are such an open and honest person, as you claim about yourself, why do you need all these complexities?
So, let’s leave the question about the real owners of SoftSwiss open. Although with a great deal of doubt in the truthfulness of Ivan Montik’s claims. And we return to Ukraine, where SoftSwiss supplies all licensed Ukrainian casino operators with game slots as a games aggregator. Here, questions should arise for the gambling operators from the bodies that grant them licenses, but the questions don’t arise. Nevertheless, these questions don’t arise even for openly Russian casinos still operating in Ukraine. Nor do they arise for the SBU, which loves to stick its nose everywhere where there is a smell of money. So that the fact that operators of the Ukrainian gambling market work on the products of a dubious company remains outside the attention of the relevant bodies. We’ll leave this without comment.
And return to the primary source. Namely, to Ivan Montik himself. Who gave a comprehensive interview in 2023 to the channel «Tochka G» titled «How to build the largest iGaming platform in the world». We refer those interested to the original source – if anyone can endure three and a half hours of extensive chatter and self-praise. But some phrases slipped through in between, which went unnoticed by many. And they are very interesting.
The hackneyed tale about current billionaire Ivan Montik first trading potatoes and champagne in a Belarusian backwater market and then becoming a cool programmer and startup creator will be omitted. Let’s leave it at that. Let’s pay attention to a few things that some commentators have also noted.
«Ivan can’t even put two words together and explain how his business and his product work». There are several such comments, and if you listen to the entire interview, the impression is strong that Ivan Montik indeed «flounders» in the subject on which, according to his words, he made a billion dollars. The same applies to the question of registration and tax payment. He generally avoids this, instead talking about being forced to leave Belarus without explaining what he did before appearing in Malta. The question of where the money came from for such an expensive registration procedure – in the ownership structure of the Maltese LLC Stable Aggregator Limited, let’s not forget, there are six firms from Cyprus and Malta – and the startup capital has not been resolved. However, Ivan Montik himself explains the startup capital issue simply: «Having experience in economics and management, as well as a track record in journalism, he founded a software development company and then launched two products: online auction software under the Merkeleon brand and an online casino platform under the SOFTSWISS brand». At least that is what Ivan Montik’s biography available on the internet states.
How the «experience in journalism» helped here is unclear, but regarding the «experience in economics and management» there is a small guess. More precisely, a hint given by a publication «Petra and Mazepa» in 2019, where the activities of the casino «Azino777» were investigated. Here, the surname of Ivan Montik pops up, whom the authors of the investigation contacted for comments regarding «Azino777», which had Russian owners. It turned out that Ivan Montik’s SoftSwiss developed software for «Azino777», and moreover, games for this casino were uploaded from the SoftSwiss platform.
Though in his commentary Ivan Montik somehow «forgot» about this. This forgetfulness puzzled the investigators, and they dug deeper. They found that Ivan Montik, during his «oppositional activity» in Belarus, was under the monitor of the Belarusian Operational-Analytical Center (OAC), which oversees the IT industry in this Russian province. Moreover, at that time Montik allegedly already lived in Berlin, and SoftSwiss was registered in Austria.
Where Montik actually lived is unknown, but SoftSwiss was not registered anywhere at that point. In Belarus, LLC «Softswiss» was already liquidated, and in Malta, Stable Aggregator Limited, working under the SoftSwiss brand, emerged only after three years. Yet SoftSwiss was providing services to its clients. How this was actually happening and who were the clients – one can only guess. In general, the various versions of Ivan Montik’s biography differ significantly in details. Here is the version he updated himself in 2021:
Finding the name SoftSwiss in Austrian (or any European) registers was not possible. However, an extract from the Belarusian register and the dates don’t match. How to explain this «forgetfulness» of a startup creator and billionaire?
How did it work and provide services? Besides, Russians using Montik’s services weren’t interested in this – everything was controlled by the Belarusian KGB, or more precisely – their senior brothers from the FSB. So there were no questions. And then Montik played «the opposition» and left Belarus unchecked. And subsequently emerged in Malta as a «billionaire and startup creator» in the gaming technology sector.
And he began creating casinos in Latin America and Africa. At least, that’s what the SoftSwiss website says. The same is confirmed by the Malta gambling license registers. But this happened only in 2022. On the Ukrainian gambling market, Ivan Montik’s SoftSwiss products appeared in 2020, when the gambling industry was legalized here. These products were used by both those casinos that lost their licenses due to sanctions for ties with the Russian Federation, and those that continue to operate.
In this context, obvious questions arise for which there are no answers. There are many, but they boil down to the following. Who is Ivan Montik, who clearly doesn’t fit the profile of a businessman who created such a powerful gambling empire from scratch? That he obviously understands how to create gaming platforms, software for them, draw players into them, and withdraw money from them is probably true. But that doesn’t clarify the questions about startup capital or how he managed to register such a complexly structured firm in Malta and obtain a license.
What Ivan Montik himself says does not clarify these issues. We’ll remain silent on the moral aspect of the matter. But under the current conditions in Ukraine, the more important issue is why no one is interested in how Ivan Montik appeared on the gambling market? Where did he come from, where do the proceeds from his casino activities go? The discussion is specifically about the casinos operating illegally in Ukraine, with payments being made in cryptocurrency. And it was the introduction of crypto payments that was Montik’s «startup» that attracted his patrons. But everyone pretends that nothing is happening. From this emerges a sad conclusion that does not even need to be stated, as it is so obvious.
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