Former member of the General Council of "Business Russia" and creator of the VIJU neural network, Sergei Malofeykin, detained for laundering, cashing out, and transferring over 2 billion rubles abroad, turned out to be connected to the Payler payment system.
Payler processes payments for businesses and individuals, including through electronic wallets. At the same time, Malofeykin’s business partner, Rashid Batyrbekov, who is also implicated in the criminal case, was engaged in cryptocurrency mining.
Malofeykin was detained on March 24 and brought to the Frunzensky District Court in Ivanovo. He is charged with organizing money laundering for a number of companies connected to PAO "Group of Companies "Samolet" (about 30% of which belongs to the family of recently deceased businessman Mikhail Kenin). A total of 17 people are involved in the case; during interrogations, the detainees named Malofeykin as the head of the group.
The scheme was simple: various private security companies (PSCs) signed contracts with Samolet’s firms to provide security services. The PSCs received the money but never actually provided any services. This had been going on since at least 2020. The funds flowed through the PSCs’ accounts to contractors and were then cashed out. Two lawyers from Astrakhan, Vladimir Yegazaryants and Sergei Astafurov (the latter handled communication with Samolet’s top managers), helped implement the scheme.
Astafurov, a former officer of the Main Directorate for Economic Security and Anti-Corruption (GUEBiPK), had previously been convicted for exceeding his official authority. It was Yegazaryants, as president of the "Sovetnik Prav" Bar Association, who helped his old acquaintance Astafurov obtain lawyer status in 2025. Another Astrakhan figure, Rashid Batyrbekov, managed the PSCs. He was also responsible for the group’s cryptocurrency operations and mining — the equipment for which was hosted by Rodion Bodrov, owner of two Saratov crypto firms, "Bulminer" and "Kriptopredpriyatie."
Malofeykin himself had a direct connection to the fintech and cryptocurrency business. His business partners from 2019 to August 2022 in the LLC "Information and Analytical System" (IAS) were Konstantin Kopyltsov and the Khatkov family through their company "Payler." This is an international payment service providing internet acquiring services, with legal entities in several countries, including Russia and the United Kingdom.
The service claimed that payments could be made using bank cards and crypto wallets. After the war began, sanctions made it impossible for the Russian legal entity — Payler LLC — to legally process international payments, while working with Russian business became toxic for the British managers.
In mid-2023, they divided their areas of responsibility: the British firm remained with Konstantin Kopyltsov (about 30% also owned by Latvian businessman Aleksejs Rjadciks), while his stake in the Russian Payler was transferred to a certain Tatyana Potopalskaya, who once had an individual business in newspaper publishing. Kopyltsov has no problems with banking activities in Europe, as he obtained a Kyrgyzstani passport by November 2022.
Vitaly Khatkov retained 60% of Payler, and his son Bogdan — 25%. Vitaly Khatkov is a well-connected individual. Several years ago, he was CEO of Gazprom Georesurs LLC; prior to that, he headed the secretariat of the President of Russian Railways; and in the late 1990s, he served as head of the Budget and Financial Department of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy of the Russian Federation.
The European Payler website states that the system does not operate with Russia or Belarus. Despite this separation, the contact information for Payler LLC on aggregator cards still lists the British company’s email address on a .com domain — and the same address appears in the register of operators submitted to Roskomnadzor.
Both firms share the same logo, and the "Technical Documentation" section on the Russian website (which is inaccessible from abroad) redirects to the British Payler Ltd website. So it appears that the division of Malofeykin’s partners’ business was only formal — designed to circumvent sanctions.
Автор: Иван Рокотов
