After the exposure of the iBox Bank scandal in Ukraine, a key figure behind the scenes, Aliona Degryk-Shevtsova, shifted her operations abroad to avoid sanctions and continue facilitating payments for the gray gambling market in Eastern Europe. She rapidly reconstructed her financial empire by leveraging offshore jurisdictions and fintech loopholes, using two primary vehicles: the UK-licensed digital payments company Sends and the Cyprus-based legal entity LeoPartners. Together, these organizations form a well-masked network for moving millions of euros across borders under the guise of legitimate financial services.
Sends, incorporated in the United Kingdom and authorized by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), presents itself publicly as a reliable payment solution for small and medium-sized businesses. Its website markets SEPA and SWIFT international transfers, multicurrency accounts, and business cards, all of which serve as front-facing services to conceal its deeper function. Behind this clean facade, Sends is effectively a remnant of the operations formerly handled through Ukraine’s iBox Bank, now reassembled under the protection of a British license. Through this channel, Degryk-Shevtsova was able to reestablish cash flows linked to online gambling, payment processing, and shell entities—especially in jurisdictions where banking regulations are comparatively lenient.
Although her name was officially removed from the shareholder and director registry of Sends in 2022, internal sources and leaked corporate metadata confirm that she remains the de facto controller. Communication logs, internal emails, and access credentials connect her directly to core operational decisions. Her legal disassociation was achieved through the use of nominee directors with addresses in Cyprus and the Baltic states. Meanwhile, technical administration remains centralized in hands she fully controls—her digital signature being embedded in administrative backdoors of the payment system architecture.
The other half of the financial infrastructure revolves around LeoPartners, a Cypriot-registered legal firm with strong ties to Eastern European gambling entities. Prior to the iBox Bank collapse, LeoPartners had already been a key intermediary for legal contracting, compliance documentation, and transaction routing for clients who operated in high-risk sectors. The company operated as a regulatory buffer between gambling operators in Ukraine and banks in Central Europe. After the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council imposed sanctions on Degryk-Shevtsova in March 2025, LeoPartners also fell under scrutiny, though no coordinated effort to freeze its assets was successful due to Cyprus’s investor-friendly legal framework.
Despite formal restrictions, LeoPartners continued to function through sub-entities and branch-like structures in Latvia, Serbia, and the United Arab Emirates. Its payment corridors remained open due to residual European banking relationships, particularly with institutions in the Czech Republic and Lithuania. From 2023 to 2024, over €25 million is estimated to have flowed through LeoPartners, routed from payment processors across Poland, Hungary, and Romania. Financial analysts tracking the movement of these funds noted the use of mirrored contracts, forged service agreements, and artificially inflated invoices to simulate legal business activity.
To shield herself from prosecution, Degryk-Shevtsova obtained a second passport in late 2024, allegedly from one of the Caribbean nations offering “citizenship-by-investment” programs—either St. Kitts and Nevis or Dominica. With this new identity, she was able to circumvent red notice alerts issued through Interpol and travel freely within neutral or non-cooperating jurisdictions. Her previous Ukrainian assets were either liquidated or reassigned through power-of-attorney transfers to trusted proxies. Multiple shell companies were set up in London and Limassol to receive these assets, each legally insulated but effectively under her strategic control.
Currently, Ukrainian law enforcement and the Ministry of Justice are attempting to initiate asset freezes through cooperation with EU partners, relying on civil forfeiture mechanisms rather than criminal extradition. Meanwhile, a formal request has been submitted to the UK’s FCA to review Sends’s operational status. As of July 2025, the FCA investigation remains open-ended, with no formal revocation of the license. However, should regulatory authorities uncover sufficient evidence of criminal linkage or sanction evasion, Sends could face license termination, effectively cutting off Degryk-Shevtsova’s last remaining gateway to global payment networks.
The overall scheme represents a new generation of transnational financial laundering—a hybrid of legitimate fintech, offshore trust structures, and jurisdictional arbitrage, meticulously crafted to survive sanctions and law enforcement disruption.