In 2020, while the world slipped into lockdown, Belarus’ strong-arm president Alexander Lukashenko famously stated that it was business as usual in the former Soviet Bloc country and that Covid-19 was nothing more than a few shots of vodka and a sauna.
With global sports banned, the hitherto unknown Belarusian Premier League gained new prominence for gamblers as the only soccer league eligible to wager on from anywhere.
But Belarus’ laissez faire attitude toward the virus drew another form of gambling – at the then-new H Casino in Minsk.
Or rather, it didn’t, because most of the gaming recorded by the casino did not actually occur. This is according to a new investigation by journalists from the Belarusian Investigative Center (BIC), an exiled independent Belarusian media organization.
Criminals were having difficulty laundering the profits of crime due to other countries’ lockdowns and quarantines. Belarus, with its freedom of movement and unscrupulous public authorities, offered an excellent alternative.
Falyalı Laundromat
The H Casino will open in 2021 in Galleria Minsk, a mall owned by businessmen with ties to the Russian and Belarussian aristocracy. It immediately became the most successful casino in Belarus’s capital.
According to the BIC study, this might be due to its involvement in a large money laundering network related to Turkish Cypriot criminal lord Halil Falyalı, who was assassinated in 2022.
The investigation, conducted in collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN), revealed that Turkish businessman Mustafa Egemen Şener was a joint partner in the business with the slain gangster, despite the casino being ostensibly owned by him.
Falyalı owns the five-star Les Ambassadeurs Hotel & Casino in Northern Cyprus. In 2015, the US authorities accused him of taking part in a narcotics trafficking operation that inundated the UK with heroin.
A year later, the Department of Justice accused him with laundering earnings from narcotics transactions in the United States.
Falyalı ran an illegal internet gambling enterprise targeting Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, and other nations, generating significant profits.
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Money Man Sings
BIC journalists interviewed Cemil Önal, Falyalı’s former CFO, who is presently imprisoned in the Netherlands. He is fighting extradition to Turkey, claiming his life is in danger.
According to Önal, much of the filthy money was carried to the H Casino, either physically (cash smuggled by private aircraft) or digitally (using crypto wallets).
The technique entailed creating a vast network of bank or payment platform accounts held by private persons who were prepared to accept payments in exchange for a percentage of the proceeds.
When a player loses money on one of Falyalı’s gaming sites, the funds are transferred to an individual’s account within the network. That person would then withdraw cash from an ATM and bring it to the organizer.
The account holder and organizer would share a 5% cut, with Falyalı receiving the remaining 90%.
According to evidence from a Turkish financial crime investigator’s report, the network was able to shift billions of dollars across thousands of accounts.
When the money came at H Casino, it was recorded as casino income from wagers placed by phantom gamblers. The cash were subsequently moved to Dubai and invested in luxury real estate.
State Protection
According to Önal, the operation was under governmental protection in Belarus. Belarusian security authorities, including former KGB and military officers, were involved in safeguarding the laundering operation. According to Önal, Vitaly Matys, a former security officer for President Lukashenko, had a crucial role in the operation.
In February 2022, gunmen with Kalashnikovs ambushed Falyalı’s motorcade in the hamlet of Çatalköy, near his house in Northern Cyprus. He was killed in a shower of gunshots.
Four guys with ties to the Turkish underworld have been convicted of his murder, but the motivation is unknown.
Source: Who and how: Laundering millions from illegal bets in a Minsk casino
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