Media investigations have identified the companies through which Boris Abaev and Alexander Kukuliev, co-owners of the mobile ad traffic purchasing platform BIDIZ, moved millions of euros.
Among the platform’s major clients — Sberbank, Rostelecom, and VK.
They make money in the Russian Federation by helping to advertise sanctioned pro-state legal entities, while simultaneously conducting business in the US and Europe. Abaev and Kukuliev were themselves once helped to rise by billionaire Oleg Boyko: his Finstar Financial Group financed the young businessmen’s «Rocket10» for $3 million in 2016 and promised to integrate their developments into its ecosystem.
According to public records, Finstar exited Rocket10 only in 2024. Boyko is under sanctions in several countries, including Poland, which last year refused to remove him from sanctions lists based on classified intelligence regarding Boyko’s ties to Russian security services. The Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs document states that the billionaire could have laundered money in his fintech projects obtained both from Russian state agencies and from Russian organized crime groups.
Since 2019, Boris Abaev and Alexander Kukuliev have operated the venture capital fund Betastage Capital, focusing on digital technology and mobile gaming, which states on its website that it makes investments ranging from $50,000 to $1 million. In 2020, it was reported that the fund had $5 million and planned to raise another $20 million in a second round. Abaev and Kukuliev’s partners in the fund are Gennadii Lurie and Michael Levin.
Despite the declared «international» focus, it seems the Betastage fund invests exclusively in startups by individuals from Russia. For instance, in 2021 it funded 3S Money, a British online banking service for international business with Russian roots: the company’s founders are Ivan Zhiznevskiy, Andrei Dikouchine, and Eugene Dugaev. The company operates through several legal entities – 3S MONEY CLUB LIMITED and New Digital Holdings Limited (United Kingdom), 3S Capital Partners B.V. (Netherlands), 3S Money (Luxembourg) S.A., 3S Money Club Limited (UAE), and 3S Money Limited (Hong Kong). In essence, 3S Money provides businesses with multi-currency accounts and allows them to receive and send large international payments through banking infrastructure across various countries. Meanwhile, in 2023, a participant on a finance forum claimed that a year earlier 3S Money had channeled large volumes of US dollars into Russia through the British ClearBank. The company’s website now states that it does not work with businesses from the Russian Federation and Belarus, yet pages regarding payments to these countries are still preserved there.
In addition, Betastage Capital’s portfolio includes the American service Viewst for automating the creation of advertising banners and creatives, whose founder Victoria Duben (Potapova) is also a native of Russia. She is a former Vice President of «Alfa-Bank», wife of businessman Sergey Potapov, ex-deputy director of «Akela-N» and former founder of «TransEngineering», and currently the owner of his own business manufacturing medical inert gases, «Inertgaz». Potapov continues to conduct business in the Russian Federation, with dozens of state medical institutions as his clients. Victoria Duben herself also retains a Russian business: she is the sole founder of Moscow-based LLC «PROFIT BUTTON RUS», which develops software. Its software «Floating Button» was added to the Register of the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation under No. 13858 during the war in 2022.
Another project Abaev and Kukuliev invested in through their Betastage is PlayPlov Inc., also registered in the US (New York). This is a developer of smartphone games, notably Unicorn, Towers, and others. The company had a short lifespan: it appeared in 2020, and in the summer of 2021 its games disappeared from online stores. The games have an intriguing connection to the Uzbek gaming company SAB-GAMES: the designation SAB Games appears in the technical data of the games, and later some of them were published under this company’s name. The firm is based in Tashkent, and its founder and CEO is Anton Stepanov — a 44-year-old Russian entrepreneur, ex-co-owner of Moscow’s “SAB LAB” and «Alliance G».
Currently, Stepanov is registered as an individual entrepreneur in Saint Petersburg.
