Golden youth or millionaire fraudster: Oleksandr Slobozhenko and his business empire
Slobozhenko’s Instagram is filled with expensive cars, elite vacations, and a luxurious lifestyle. Many teenagers perceive him as their idol. Meanwhile, as this ’young talent’ drives around in cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at the world’s best resorts, a bloody war continues in Ukraine. It seems that Slobozhenko is completely unaware that our cities are bombed by terrorists daily, dozens of innocent people die, and our Defenders shed their blood every minute. For our freedom, for the independence of the state.
What is most surprising is this: Slobozhenko’s business is built entirely on fraud and deceit. All the money he receives is human misery. Most of his money is earned by advertising illegal online casinos and drugs, which, at best, do not harm. At worst, they can lead to serious health problems.
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Slobozhenko couldn’t have gotten himself out of a poor family on his own and acquired tens of millions of dollars from nowhere.
As it turns out, such a thing can only happen in a fairy tale. In our reality, everything is much more down-to-earth.
Russian connection
We think we won’t surprise anyone by saying that Slobozhenko has ties with the aggressor country. Before the start of the full-scale war, his company, Traffic Devils, actively provided services to Russian enterprises. This brought in huge cash. Even now, 15 months into the criminal aggression of the Russian Federation, the ’businessman’ hasn’t managed to translate his company’s website into Ukrainian. The interface is available only in Russian and English.
All of Slobozhenko’s company activities are ’on the edge of foul’. Making money on fraud can lead to prison not only in Ukraine but also in any civilized country.
Therefore, to work calmly in Russia, he needed a ’roof’. And he found one. You’d be surprised, but it turns out that Slobozhenko’s ’contact’ in the terrorist country was a businessman named Oleh Boyko, close to the head of the PMC ’Wagner’, Yevgeniy Prigozhin. Boyko is very well-known in Russia in the fintech area. But he earns his profits differently: the main source of income for Boyko’s companies comes from illegal online casinos.
This is where the talented young guy Slobozhenko came in handy, setting up the advertisement for the Russian businessman’s criminal activities correctly.
Then the war began, and the business (at least publicly) had to be shut down. Whether Slobozhenko’s structures are currently operating in the aggressor country is unknown. No one will likely tell about it.
Pro-Russian lobby in Ukraine
Yet, connections to pro-Russian elements can also be traced back home. According to information from sources, the starting capital for Slobozhenko didn’t appear out of thin air.
He is merely a front — Traffic Devils’ activities were initially sponsored by the group of the infamous oligarch, banned OPFL deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Vadym Stolar.
The source also confirmed that, aside from Stolar, another big businessman, former Verkhovna Rada deputy and supporter of the ’Russian world’ Dmytro Shentsev, is involved in Slobozhenko’s business. Amid full-scale war, he resigned his parliamentary mandate. On September 21, 2022, the Verkhovna Rada supported the corresponding decision.
Shentsev also finances another ’muddy’ story — a cryptocurrency exchange called ’Whitebit’. Through the exchange, criminal funds were laundered, which repeatedly became the subject of media investigations. All routes led to Moscow.
Military affairs
At the beginning of the war, Slobozhenko remained silent. Then activity began. He supplied aid to the front. But this ’aid’ didn’t even cost half the value of one car in his enormous fleet. He publicized himself in the war, and that was it.
What’s more interesting is that in one interview, he talked about how he helped the SSU from the beginning of the war. Supposedly, his company directed traffic worth millions of dollars to the aggressor country so that the Russians could see the truth about the war in Ukraine.
Indeed, such an operation took place. But all the money went down the drain. Millions of dollars spent on revealing the truth to RF citizens were squandered. Instead of spending funds on the most needed resources in a challenging time, some ’specialists’ wrongly diverted huge sums through Slobozhenko. There’s no result, no money.
Colleague under arrest
The United States does not like to joke with fraudsters. We managed to establish that Slobozhenko had previously cooperated with some RF citizen, Aleksandr Zhukov, on Russian matters. It was back in 2018 when Slobozhenko became the founder of Traffic Devils.
Like his Ukrainian colleague, Zhukov directed fraudulent traffic to the USA. As established by the American investigation, the fake businessman’s activities damaged the American advertising industry by 7 million dollars. In November 2018, Zhukov was arrested in Bulgaria by a US warrant. In September 2021, a US court sentenced the Russian to prison for grand-scale fraud.
It’s entirely foreseeable that Slobozhenko faces the same fate. The young multi-millionaire violates the laws of all adequate countries with his fraudulent actions.
Tax issues
In Ukraine, besides fraudulent activities and financing the aggressor country, Slobozhenko faces other problems.
We already mentioned that Traffic Devils’ activities are not registered in Ukraine, so no taxes are paid or intended to be paid. Due to this, the tax authorities have already opened a criminal case against the structures laundering the fraudster’s funds.
Officially, in his homeland, Slobozhenko is a sole proprietor, 3rd tax group, with a tax rate of 3% of income. It’s worth recalling that the maximum income for the 3rd tax group is just under 8 million UAH. This amount equals the cost of just one of the businessman’s not-so-expensive cars.
Therefore, the tax service really has something to watch out for... and not just them.