The Fondy Payment System was banned in Russia because of direct connection with the scammers working in the field of credit brokerage

The Fondy Payment System based on payments with VISA and MasterCard cards, which also operates in Ukraine, is not able to work with fake credit brokers in the Russian Federation for two days already, due to the inability to accept cards and their disconnection from the banking system by Tinkoff Bank. This information was published by the well-known and one of the most famous Telegram channels called Badbank, which is fighting illegal payments by posting corresponding videos.

 

"The cooperation between Fondy and fraudulent credit brokers was complicated by the inability to accept card payment anymore. The current situation is taking place for two days already, and it's sad," the authors of the Badbank TG channel write.

 

A few days ago, information about the cooperation between Fondy and the Russian Tinkoff Bank appeared on this channel.

 

"About the FONDY aggregator that viciously and dishonestly deceived the Tinkoff Bank. Oleg Tinkov is one of the best innovative entrepreneurs in the country; however, he has a deadly and severe disease now. In addition, he was threatened with extradition to the USA. Probably the last thing he needs in such a situation is the direct damage to his reputation as a result of connection with murderers, especially in Austria. Sounds legit, doesn't it? However, these days, all sorts of shady people can take advantage of weakness and confusion. As a result, the bank that belongs to Oleg was caught by the media servicing all the scam credit brokers in Russia using the model of automatic subscription. It is not the best time for the bank to deal with this kind of issue.  This is a truly disgusting business in the field of mass deception of Russians. The bank was forced to answer that sometimes payment aggregators deceive the bank and start an illegal business, which, according to experts, is not acceptable, from the point of view of reputation.

 

But who wanted to frame Tinkoff Bank? All the mentioned brokers were connected to the bank through a remarkably interesting aggregator called Fondy.IO. The company is interesting not only because no one has heard of this company in the field of ordinary e-commerce. The founders of the company are even more interesting. 70% of the company is owned by Austrian citizen Stefan Zapototsky, the former head of Sberbank of Austria, who was scandalously dismissed from Sberbank due to an investigation against a number of people of Russian origin in Vienna on charges in a contract murder of Andrei Kochetkov. This case resulted in the mass elimination of a number of Austrian officials from their positions. The remaining 30% belongs to the Vagorovsky family, the founders of the wallet WalletOne and the raiders who fled Ukraine under the risk of criminal prosecution. Both stories are directly available to the popular media and do not require special rights to access them. The main question here is the following. Why wasn't Tinkoff Bank itself interested in the biography of the shareholders of the aggregator?" wrote the Badbank TG channel.

 

On the same day, Tinkoff Bank announced that it totally disabled Fondy and the scammers who worked with this system and stopped all types of cooperation with them.

 

 "There is nothing more pleasant than watching the tantrums of the illegal industry that has been turned off by the channel. That is how we deal with shady brokers these days. While Tinkoff Bank disables them with the speed of the sloth from Zootopia, the Fondy aggregator, who covered those shady brokers (interesting information: one of the shareholders is involved in the case of a contract killing in Vienna; while co-shareholders are the raiders fled from Ukraine) writes a bunch of letters to the banks, asking them for help, while none of them want to cooperate. The number of angry comments is raising day by day."

 

According to the Ukrainian media, during the period from 2014 to 2018, the NBU and Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council restricted the activity of a number of Internet service providers, thus blocking access of the users to numerous resources and services. Such websites as "webmoney.ru", "paymaster.ua", "elmi.ua", "wm-factor.com.ua", and others were blocked in a matter of days. As a result, many payment systems have ceased to exist officially.

 

However, their place was quickly taken by the company located at fondy.eu/fondy.ua, which was created in 2014 and is not registered in the territory of Ukraine by the acquiring network.

According to the law, the acceptance of payment bank or credit cards for payment for the services is impossible without an official license of the NBU. However, this company managed to bypass these norms, creating several dozen of straw companies to accept payments and get cash money.

 

 

This payment system was created by Igor Fisun and Valeria Vagorovskaya by using the management team and developers of Privatbank. In 2014, almost the entire team of the e-business center left the now nationalized bank and organized this company with the money of Fisun and Vagorovskaya It consists of Ukrainian, European, and Russian branches.

 

These days, Igor Fisun is not a member of this company, and the management is in the hands of Valeria Vagorovskaya, who has several citizenships and lives abroad. Vagorovskaya is actively developing her payment system and buys numerous publications in the media.

 

The main clients of FONDY are casinos, bookmakers, services related to the porn industry, i.e., businesses that are currently illegal in Ukraine. Payments are accepted through Ukrainian and European banks. Since FONDY is not licensed by the NBU, the following companies have been registered (or purchased) :

 

OOO FK "Alliance" — the company provides financial services, and according to the NBU license, performs the transfer of funds in national currency without opening an account. Valeria Vagorovskaya is the owner of OOO FK "Alliance".

More information about this type of business can be found in the register of court decisions: according to the court ruling of January 2018, several companies, including OOO FK "Alliance", were found to be involved in the process of cashing out and withdrawing funds obtained by criminal means from illegally operating casinos, sweepstakes, slot machines, and by using acquiring systems not registered on the territory of Ukraine, such as Megapay.ua, Pay-trio.com, and Fondy.ua.

 

FinTech company FONDY is a developer of a service with which any entrepreneur can connect to accept online payments on a website or in a mobile application from clients from all over the world. The service supports more than 50 payment methods, including Visa and Mastercard, Internet banking of popular European banks, local methods (Trustpay, Alipay, iDEAL), Apple Pay and Google Pay mobile wallets.