Інтер.Блог

Following the publication of an investigation into the assets of Yaroslav Holovachov’s family and the discrepancy between their declared income and actual lifestyle, references to the materials and related reports reportedly began disappearing from public view.

The cleanup concerns information related to real estate holdings, the free use of luxury assets, and complex property registration schemes involving relatives.

In turn, we are publishing an investigation that sheds light on the activities of Yaroslav Holovachov and the property status of his family, including numerous real estate properties and assets registered to close relatives.

“French Quarter” is one of the most elite and expensive residential complexes in Kyiv. It was here in 2020, right after finishing school, that Myron Holovachov acquired a 100 square meter apartment. Such an apartment costs at least 300,000 dollars, and Myron’s grandfather gifted it to him. Why does this interest us? It’s simple: Myron is the son of the head of the Kyiv Court of Appeal. And this is where our journey through the numerous properties of the Holovachov family begins, because this apartment is the least of what we managed to find, writes Hromadske.

Eternal Judge

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For almost 10 years, the Kyiv Court of Appeal, one of the most important judicial institutions in the capital, has been led by the same person — Yaroslav Holovachov. Only Ruslan Kozlov, the head of the infamous Pechersk court, can boast of a similar long-standing employment success.

According to the law, one cannot lead a court of the first or second instance for more than six years, that is, two terms of three years each. However, various tricks allow these two years to circumvent the norms of the law, which they theoretically should defend

The last of the two possible terms of holding the position of the head of the Court of Appeal for Yaroslav Holovachov ended back in 2021. However, the man was not even going to leave his post. On September 6, 2024, Holovachov’s third term ended, which is not provided for by law. Now the fourth term is ongoing. Out of the possible two.

“This is the standard scheme for the heads of the courts and generally the judges of the old judicial corporation. What is called the judicial mafia. Eternity of court heads in positions. This is power, it’s money, it’s influence, it’s also the court’s connection with political power, and it’s a political channel through which power most often commands the judges. There are several schemes: either just completely ignore the law (this happens less often), or it often happens that a judge voluntarily retires from the position of the court head a month before the end of the term, then someone else fulfills the duties, or even his assistants… Then after a month, the powers are removed, and this judge becomes the head of the court again. This is widespread throughout the country. This is an unethical practice, an obvious violation of the law,” explains Mykhailo Zhernakov, the chairman of the DEJURE Foundation.

Meanwhile, during his fourth term as head, Holovachov actively continues his activities. In October 2024, he blocks the consideration of the Higher Anti-Corruption Court’s appeal regarding the review of the preventive measure of the notorious head of the Khmelnytskyi MSEC Tetyana Krupa, who is suspected of illegal enrichment. In November, he travels on working visits to Germany. In December, he participates in events of the High Council of Justice on the efficiency of justice.

One might assume that Holovachov is truly an indispensable manager, but no. In 2020, the Audit Office conducted an audit in the Court of Appeal. They analyzed the court’s work for 2018-2019. And they revealed a number of serious violations and shortcomings in the financial and economic activities of the court. In particular, the inefficient use of almost 2 million hryvnias to purchase tools that were not put into service for a long time, and problems with bookkeeping. Also, the court planned over 11 million hryvnias in unreasonable expenses.

Furthermore, over 6 million hryvnias were spent on repairs and maintenance of premises that were not even on the institution’s balance sheet and lacked necessary documentation. The report separately mentioned that the court’s premises do not meet the basic requirements of legislation and national construction standards. In particular, this concerns the arrangement of courtrooms, deliberation rooms, premises for participants of the process, and witnesses.

Despite the fact that not everything is smooth in the court, nobody wants to leave their favorite work. Especially when, over 25 years in various court positions with state salaries, one has acquired an entire empire of real estate.

Million-dollar Gifts and Mysterious Wealth

March 2024. Petropavlivska Borshchahivka. 10 acres of valuable land near the capital become the property of Anastasiya Holovachova — the wife of the court head. The land was gifted to her by her mother. According to the registry, the plot is valued at 16 million 300 thousand hryvnias. Anastasiya has no business currently. The notary’s certificate, under which she supposedly worked, has been invalid since March 2021.

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In his 2023 declaration, the court head indicated almost one and a half million hryvnias and another 120 thousand dollars in family savings. If all this money were converted into hryvnias at the exchange rate at the time, it would amount to just over 6 million hryvnias. The salary of the court head is also quite decent — over 3 million UAH per year. There are also revenues from securities and property transactions.

Aside from this, the Holovachov family has a number of plots scattered around the outskirts of Kyiv: 45 acres in the village of Buky for farming, 10 acres in Shevchenkove for construction. Another 8 acres — in Hnidyn for gardening. And these are only in the wife’s ownership. Yaroslav himself has another plot of 8 acres in Gnidyn and another 25 acres in the village of Fenyvychi for development.

From Father-in-law and Mother-in-law for Free and with Love

“Novopecherski Lypky.” The Holovachov family has a whole 118 squares here. An apartment of this size without renovation in this building now costs 12.5 million hryvnias — about 300 thousand dollars. The property belongs to Serhiy Rybchenko — Holovachov’s father-in-law. Three rooms purchased in 2013 differed little in dollar value. From $3500 to $4500 per square meter. Another elite residential complex – “Central Park”. In it — another apartment of 120 squares, purchased in 2019. An apartment of the same size on a real estate website is offered for 650 thousand dollars, or over 27 million UAH. At the time of purchase without renovation, this apartment cost at least 120 thousand dollars.

But what does the father-in-law have to do with it? It’s simple. It is in this apartment, according to the declaration of the head of the Court of Appeal Holovachov, that his whole family is registered on the terms of free use.

Similarly, they use a parking space there for free. Likewise, the father-in-law provided a car — a 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLS 400 — for free use. The car was purchased in December 2023. And it costs at least 80 thousand dollars.

The father-in-law, by the way, was a deputy of the Kyiv-Sviatoshyn Raion Council, elected in 2015 from “Eurosolidarity.” In his last declaration for 2020, he indicated slightly less than a million hryvnias of business income for the year. And another 100 thousand in pension. A lot, but is it enough for all the aforementioned property? But the mother-in-law, Lileya Kernycha, is not sitting idly either. For many years she has had businesses — flower trade and construction, the rest, including an individual entrepreneur, are in one way or another connected with leasing real estate. In the same 2020, the total official income from all businesses amounted to 920 thousand hryvnias. About 70 thousand a month.

Kernycha, just like her husband, willingly gives her assets to the children for use. In the luxurious capital apartments, the judge’s family became cramped, and already in September 2022, the Holovachovs amicably moved into her 220-square-meter mansion with a 12-acre plot in the suburbs of Kyiv, the village of Severynivka. In the sales department, we were told that a bare shell costs there from 80 thousand dollars, but depending on the location and decoration, the price can reach 700 thousand dollars.

Similarly, the Holovachov family uses the mother-in-law’s 47-square-meter apartment for free in the same “French Quarter,” where the grandfather on the father’s side gifted the grandson Myron the property, which we mentioned at the beginning of this story. Also, the judge uses a parking space there.

“French Quarter” was not only favored by the father-in-law and mother-in-law. The father of the head of the court simultaneously purchased another apartment and two garages with the in-laws. You ask why a family, where one declared car is listed, which belongs to the grandfather, needs three parking spaces? Because there is also a passion for elite “cars” in Yaroslav’s family.

Car Fleet

For example, the BMW X5. In 2023, it belonged to his wife Anastasiya. In April 2023, she had an accident while driving it. In December, she was selling it for almost 37 thousand dollars. According to registry data, the 70-year-old mother-in-law of the court head now drives a 2019 Audi Q8. Such a car costs on average over 60 thousand dollars. The 73-year-old father-in-law, in addition to the mentioned “Mercedes,” owns a regular Fiat Doblo 2020 model year. The 78-year-old father of Holovachov in 2024 purchased a 2016 Mersedes-Benz Citan for approximately 10 thousand dollars and a 2017 Volkswagen Transporter for 20 thousand dollars. But Yaroslav Holovachov himself does not own any cars.

Of course, we wanted to ask Yaroslav Holovachov himself how he has been managing to circumvent the rules for four years, remaining in position for a decade. However, no one answered any of the phone numbers of the Kyiv Court of Appeal head.

If we calculate all the real estate of the Holovachov family, which, in addition to him, includes his wife Anastasiya, sons Myron and Myroslav, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and the head of the court’s father, they currently own — 6 apartments, 5 garages (all in the central part of the capital, mostly the most expensive Pechersk), 15 land plots scattered around the outskirts of Kyiv, with a total area of almost 2 hectares and another 2 residential houses. According to our most modest calculations, the total value of all non-movable assets as of now is 3 million dollars.

A large part of the entire property empire is in the free use of Holovachov himself or members of his family. As for income, to compare it schematically, let’s take 2020, which was reported by Holovachov himself and his family, as well as his wife’s family. So, in 2020, the incomes of all family members from all activities amounted to about 5.5 million UAH. In 2023, Yaroslav and his family declared about 6 million UAH of income. Yes, these are all very large amounts, but at such a pace, collecting for multi-million dollar fortunes in dollars would probably take years.

The story involving Dmytro Druzhynskyi and Maryna Levkovych is no longer just another tale about online casinos, cryptocurrency, and payment services. It increasingly resembles a ready-made detective series: an international wanted notice, a billion dollars, dozens of searches, a bookmaker’s license used as a cover, an American passport, Ukrainian roots, Russian connections, and visibly nervous attempts to cleanse the internet of unwanted information.

Kazakhstani investigators claim: through infrastructure linked to the Pin-Up and Pinco brands, huge sums were being withdrawn from the country under the guise of legal bookmaker activities. At the center of the scheme are US citizen Dmytro Druzhynskyi and Ukrainian citizen Maryna Levkovych (Ginzburg), who were placed on the international wanted list at the beginning of the year.

But the most interesting thing in this story – is not even the amounts of money. It’s how former players from the post-Soviet gambling business, crypto processing, offshore entities, Ukrainian and Russian connections, and the traditional magic for such schemes intertwined around online betting: «we didn’t organize anything, we just provided a service».

At the same time, a significant part of the publications regarding the case comes either from Kazakhstani official statements or from so-called «leak» platforms and investigative sites. Therefore, some of the information requires a cautious approach and has not yet been confirmed by court decisions, and it is quite difficult to piece together a picture that is more or less consistent with reality.

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Why Kazakhstan?

The official part of the story was voiced by the Financial Monitoring Agency of Kazakhstan (AFM). According to the investigation, under the guise of a legal bookmaker business, a network of illegal online casinos linked to the Pin-Up and Pinco brands operated in the country.

The key element of the scheme, as investigators claim, was LLC «Bonami», which obtained an official bookmaker’s license in Kazakhstan. Formally – a legal betting market. In fact, as the AFM believes, – infrastructure for servicing online gambling and withdrawing money out of the country.

The investigation states that clients’ money was first accumulated on transit accounts, then passed through payment companies Gold Pay and Cyber Pay (later renamed Pinnacle Financial Solutions), and then converted into cryptocurrency. According to Kazakhstani law enforcement, over a billion dollars could have been withdrawn through this system. In January 2026, Druzhinsky and Levkovich were placed on the international wanted list, and then the court sanctioned their absentee arrest.

Kazakhstan itself has long become one of the key markets for post-Soviet gambling business. After tightening regulations, Kazakhstan turned out to be a convenient platform: a relatively liberal market, active development of electronic payments, high interest in online betting, and the ability to operate through a network of intermediaries.

According to Kazakhstani media and investigative publications, Druzhynskyi and Levkovych were involved precisely in organizing the payment infrastructure – that is, not so much the casinos themselves, but the most important element of any gambling business: the movement of money. And that’s already the level not of simple «IT guys», but of financial coordinators.

Judging by open publications, Maryna Levkovych also appeared under the surname Ginzburg. Dmytro Druzhynskyi is referred to in a number of publications as a US citizen of Ukrainian origin. Some materials mention that he may have previously been involved in stories related to underground gambling even before the Kazakhstani case. However, these data require additional verification.

How the scheme worked: murky traces

What’s interesting is something else: the entire structure looked not like a classic casino, but like a hybrid of fintech, a crypto exchanger, and a payment gateway. That’s why the investigation pays such attention not only to the bookmaker but also to the financial intermediaries.

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If you piece together the official AFM statements and investigative resource publications, the scheme looked roughly like this. The user deposited money through the formally legal bookmaker infrastructure. After that, the funds passed through a chain of payment companies, with the purpose of payments masked as legal operations. Then the money was split and went through cryptocurrency channels. Then the funds were withdrawn beyond Kazakhstan.

It was at the processing stage that structures like Gold Pay, Cyber Pay, and Pinnacle Financial Solutions emerged. For a classic illegal casino, this is almost an ideal model: formally, you have a license and a payment service, but in fact – an international money movement machine.

Here’s where the murkiest part of the story begins. There are no publicly available legally confirmed direct proofs that the scheme was managed from Russia or by Russian structures at this time. However, several factors make it worth looking closely in that direction.

First, the Pin-Up brand itself has long been operating in the markets of the former USSR and is traditionally associated with the Russian-speaking segment of gambling.

Second, similar high-risk processing schemes have historically been built through a network of companies linked to both Russian and offshore markets. After 2022, a significant part of such structures began actively migrating to Kazakhstan, Armenia, Cyprus, UAE, and other jurisdictions.

Third, publications from a number of investigative resources mention hints of connections of individual scheme participants with influential people from Russia’s financial-political environment, who have been most actively «cultivating» Kazakhstan in the last five years. And the very logic of the business shows: without serious political and banking «cover», such billion-dollar operations cannot exist.

Because this is not about an underground casino in a basement. These are transactions through banks, licensed payment structures, crypto exchange, international transfers, and massive advertising infrastructure. Such schemes usually live exactly as long as it is beneficial for someone at the top to pretend that nothing unusual is happening.

The Ukrainian direction in this story looks no less sensitive, although in the overall summary it also leads to Russia. After the legalization of gambling business, Ukraine became one of the largest online betting markets in the region. Around it, an industry of payment services, affiliate networks, and marketing agencies quickly grew. Even at the time of adopting the relevant law in Ukraine, there were a lot of publications claiming that it was the Russians who were pushing this decision, as they needed a legal platform, and they had the corresponding capital and influence on the Ukrainian authorities.

Moreover, it’s worth noting that Pin-Up’s operations in Ukraine caused a huge scandal, as it turned out that the brand is closely linked to the RF. In connection with this scandal and against the backdrop of the full-scale war, some market players, including Pin-Up, began moving operations to safer jurisdictions – primarily Kazakhstan and the UAE.

That’s why Ukrainian surnames, Ukrainian managers, and companies linked to former participants in the local gambling market keep popping up in investigative materials. The problem is that the gambling business in the post-Soviet space has long existed as a single ecosystem without clear national borders. Today, a payment operator can be registered in Almaty, owners live in Dubai, development is in Kyiv, marketing goes through Cyprus, and money – passes through crypto and settles who knows where.

Druzhinsky and Levkovych – who stands behind them?

As for the scandal’s protagonists – Dmytro Druzhynskyi and Maryna Levkovych – there’s one more intriguing question: where did they disappear to? And the exact answer to this question is still unknown. Kazakhstan placed both on the international wanted list, but there is no information about their detention.

Investigative publications suggest that the suspects may have left Kazakhstan long before the active phase of the investigation and moved to one of the jurisdictions traditionally popular among gambling structures – UAE, Cyprus, or Eastern European countries.

There is one more important nuance in the search for Druzhinsky and Levkovich – in recent weeks, several sites have reported attempts to mass-delete publications about their case from search results and public access.

Such a fact by itself proves nothing. But in the world of gray gambling, this is considered almost a mandatory crisis management procedure. First, a stream of publications is launched. Then a stream of deletions begins. Then new companies and new brands appear. And very often the same people continue to work – just under a different name.

One can assume that Dmytro Druzhynskyi and Maryna Levkovych will safely weather the storm and receive guarantees that the case will be shelved. But for that, the scandal needs to die down and publications about their involvement in the scam need to disappear. From which two conclusions follow: someone very influential really stands behind the pair, and the services of Druzhynskyi and Levkovych are urgently needed by this person or these people.

And therefore, the main question of this story – is not Druzhynskyi and Levkovych. People of this level are usually not the ultimate beneficiaries, but operators: they build infrastructure, negotiate with banks, ensure processing, solve license issues.

And the billion-dollar flows they manage never belong exclusively to managers. That’s why the Pin-Up case in Kazakhstan looks so sensitive. If the investigation really reaches the ultimate beneficiaries, it could be not just a local criminal case, but a transnational network involving representatives of the financial, cryptocurrency, and gambling businesses of several countries.

Most investigators name Pin-Up owner Dmitriy Punin as the beneficiary of the scheme, but is that really the case? The thing is that at one time there were a lot of investigations on the web claiming that influential figures from both RF and Ukraine stand behind Punin. Therefore, there is no answer to the question of who the real beneficiary of the scheme is either.

For now, the public picture looks like this. Kazakhstani authorities are demonstrating a tough reaction. The suspects are wanted. Information about the case continues to appear in waves. Both investigative resources and platforms with dubious reputations are actively working around the topic. Parallel to this, a mass procedure of cleaning up negative information about Druzhynskyi and Levkovych is underway.

And this usually means one thing: the fight is not only in the courts, but also behind the scenes of justice and the public process. How it all ends – is still unclear. Because, on the other hand, the mass cleanup campaign is opposed by another, no less massive one – new materials with new details appear in place of the deleted ones. And this means that besides the forces standing behind Druzhynskyi and Levkovych, there are others opposing them.

And in general, the story of Dmytro Druzhynskyi and Maryna Levkovych – is a very modern post-Soviet plot. There are no suitcases of cash and underground casinos in hotels, like in the nineties.

There is crypto. There are payment gateways. There is a bookmaker’s license as an official facade. There is an international network of companies. There are people with multiple jurisdictions and passports. And there are huge amounts of money that disappear faster than court decisions appear.

And there is the main question that remains unanswered for now: who was the real master of this system. Because in such stories, processing organizers rarely turn out to be the last link.