Cyprus has long been a haven for people from the former Soviet Union involved in illegal gambling. On Wednesday, November 6, the district court in Nicosia held a hearing on the extradition of a Russian man who was detained in October in central Limassol.

Earlier, the police of the Republic of Cyprus reported that he was apprehended based on an arrest warrant issued by Europol. The extradition request came from the United Kingdom, where the defendant is accused of recruiting British citizens to illegal online casino platforms.

According to the portal ruscyprus, during the cyber‑fraud hearing details emerged about the organizer of the scheme. He turned out to be another Russian citizen, Eduard Lebedev. Our own investigation found that the real name of this new figure in the case is Eduard Eduardovich Lebedev.

The so‑called organizer of online casino platforms in Europe does not particularly hide himself: the 34‑year‑old Muscovite proudly writes on his VK page, “If your dreams don’t warrant a couple of life sentences, then they’re not really dreams.” These words, one might say, have a chance of becoming prophetic.

On that page he advertises his sites WakeApp — wakeappnetwork(.)com and wakeapp(.)ru — which are now unavailable. However, web archive data show that WakeApp is the name of an affiliate network.

Lebedev himself never hid the fact that he was the founder of WakeApp — this is stated on his LinkedIn. In addition, Eduard Eduardovich Lebedev was the head of the legal entity LLC Veikkapp, liquidated in 2021. The stated activities of that entity were “activities related to the use of computing equipment and information technologies, other,” which makes it possible to establish that this legal entity is the WakeApp affiliate network.

A vacancy for a similarly named company in Belarus, LLC KrokusApps / WakeApp, leads us to the service Chilli Partners. The job posting directly states that “Chilli Partners is an international holding in the iGaming industry that creates and develops online products.” The company openly declares its connection to online casinos, and its website even lists brands of illegal online casinos associated with the holding.

That Lebedev is leader of Chilli Partners is also confirmed by a July 16, 2021 report on the portal igbaffiliate, where a comment about the merger of new online gambling companies is given by a person named Edward Swan (swan translating from English as “lebedev”). Moreover, the article directly states that Eduard resides in Cyprus, where the headquarters of Chilli Partners is located.

These facts allow a definitive conclusion — in the case of the man detained in Cyprus under a Europol warrant, the owner of a huge online casino holding is involved. Ruscyprus reports that in the courtroom accusations were heard against Eduard Lebedev for organizing illegal online casino platforms throughout Europe.

In the United Kingdom, authorities are currently actively fighting illegal gambling. According to research, in 2023 the UK online casino market was worth about seven billion pounds sterling, and the government is strengthening measures to control and counter illegal activity in this sector.

The district court in Nicosia postponed the case and set the next hearing for late November. Official comments from the Russian Embassy in the Republic of Cyprus have not yet been made.

In recent years, Cypriot authorities have stepped up the capture of criminals who committed various cybercrimes. For example, in 2020 a Russian man, Alexey Berkovich, was extradited from Cyprus to the UK. He was arrested in Cyprus in 2020 at the request of British authorities and accused of participating in a large‑scale cyberattack on UK financial institutions that led to thousands of clients’ data being leaked. After lengthy proceedings, Cypriot authorities approved Berkovich’s extradition to the UK, where he faced trial and further investigations.

More recently, Cyprus stripped Polish crypto pyramid founder Roman Kazimierz Ziemian of citizenship. He is now accused of stealing 21 million US dollars via the FutureNet trading platform. The Cypriot police received the Interpol notice only last year, and he now faces up to 14 years in prison.

Another recent cyber extradition involved a Bulgarian hacker, Nikolay Dimitrov, who used servers in Cyprus to coordinate attacks on major British online platforms. After his arrest and extensive investigation, the Cypriot court approved his extradition to the UK, where Dimitrov was charged with creating a botnet used in DDoS attacks.

Cyprus consistently finds itself in the spotlight for extraditions of cybercriminals to the UK. Thanks to close cooperation with British law enforcement and effective legislation, the island has become a key point in the fight against cybercrime.