We place our bets, gentlemen: how the Elena Isinbayeva Charitable Foundation turned into a casino
We place our bets, gentlemen: how the Elena Isinbayeva Charitable Foundation turned into a casino
The website of the Elena Isinbaeva Charitable Foundation unexpectedly opened a casino and sports betting. The management of the organization says that this is supposedly a mistake, but something is wrong here. Why is this beneficial for the athlete?
On Friday, there was a wave of media reports that fugitive athlete Elena Isinbaeva closed a charitable foundation in her name, which had been operating in Volgograd since 2013. From this, a number of publications concluded that the jumper could allegedly demonstrate her determination to leave Russia forever.
Error or business scheme
The reason for the attention of the press was the official website of the Isinbayeva Foundation, on which content from one of the bookmaking companies suddenly appeared. It is interesting that the data of the company under the fund’s domain did not fit on one page, as if it were the consequences of a hack or some incredible technical confusion, but migrated to the site in entire sections.
The bookmaker’s support service reported that the company, of course, regularly uses mirrors on the Internet, but they categorically deny the involvement of online businessmen in the seizure of the domain of the Isinbayeva Foundation. They say that all available mirrors are published on the network, domains can always be tracked – it’s just some kind of technical glitch.
Suddenly, casinos and sports betting appeared on the charity foundation’s website
The fund unexpectedly announced a technical error.
—Technical glitch, that is. “Everything works for us,” the Volgograd representative office told the media.
According to SPARK data, the financial statements for 2022 were submitted to the Federal Tax Service with zero figures. Thus, now the athlete’s organization does not actually conduct any activities. At the same time, reports about the cessation of activities there are denied.
—The fund has not closed, the fund is working—this is all untrue. Charitable donations stopped for some time, and this happened with the pandemic. We don’t have any projects yet because there was no budget,” representatives of the foundation told TASS.
The athlete’s personal website still works and is maintained in Russian
Why doesn’t the charity fund close?
This statement confirms data from information systems reporting that things are going so-so at the fund, to put it mildly. If in 2022 the financial movements were equal to zero, then a year earlier the organization completely went into a deep minus – by almost 12 million rubles.
Finding a legal entity that owns an online bookmaker is almost impossible: of course, there is no output data to help identify the owners. And on thematic review sites, clients of the office indicate as the main disadvantage that it does not have a license, that is, its illegality.
Given the lack of visible prospects for reviving charitable activities (it is unlikely that large businesses or government organizations will risk giving money to the structure of the athlete who fled to the Canary Islands), alternative options for earning money come to mind. Whether the bookmaker’s managers could have quietly agreed with the fund’s managers to use the Internet address of the paused fund is an open question, but the hype around this definitely plays into the hands of the betting owners.
Here’s what they write about the bookmaker who took over the domain of the Isinbayeva Foundation on the Internet
How Isinbayeva raised a charity project
The Elena Isinbaeva Charitable Foundation is the very first legal entity opened by the athlete. It has existed since 2013, appearing immediately after the pole vaulter’s rise to the world sports Olympus.
Thanks to the foundation, she objectively managed to do a lot for the development of sports in her small homeland – in Volgograd. With the organization’s money, more than 90 sports grounds were built in the region for free use, and annual athletics competitions were held for gifted children.
Tens of millions of rubles were pumped through the organization. From 2017 to 2020 alone, the foundation won presidential grants worth 39 million rubles; no one can even calculate how many donations there were from business representatives during the structure’s operation.
The Elena Isinbayeva Foundation ended 2021 with a multimillion-dollar minus
For her active charitable work in 2018 in Monte Carlo, Elena Isinbayeva even became a laureate of the “Woman of the Year” award, which is held annually under the patronage of Prince Albert II of Monaco and the honorary president of the ceremony, Princess Charlene.
Legally, she still remains the president of her foundation, although she left the ranks of its founders. With such a long and eventful history of a bright and socially significant project that has brought her recognition abroad, is Isinbayeva really willing to close it? The athlete still hasn’t even closed her individual entrepreneur, through which she earns money by renting her own real estate.
However, with the deterioration of the global political situation in the context of growing contradictions between Russia and the West, Elena Isinbayeva still fled to the Canaries, where she has expensive real estate, choosing a prosperous life in Europe and a warm position as a member of the International Olympic Committee.
From left to right: Joel Bouzou, Elena Isinbaeva, Prince Albert II of Monaco and Mayor of Sochi Anatoly Pakhomov.
What kind of business does Isinbayeva have in the West?
The Russian athlete and an active supporter of a healthy lifestyle in Switzerland owns a company engaged in the wholesale trade of tobacco products, in particular cigars, as well as elite alcohol.
The company is called Luxury Legends Sagl, it was opened by Isinbayeva in August 2015 – a couple of months after she received the rank of major in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and entered into a contract with the Russian Armed Forces. The office is located in Lancy, one of the most densely populated areas of the canton of Geneva. The place is notable for the fact that it is the first “biocommune” in Switzerland, where they do not use any fertilizers or insecticides to care for the local nature.
In this business, Isinbayeva has four partners: three “physicists” and one legal entity. The most colorful of the co-founders is 67-year-old Joel Bouzou. Famous French pentathlete, world champion and Olympic medalist, figure in the international sports and social movement, president of the World Olympians Association and advisor to Prince Albert II of Monaco.
Luxury Legends Sagl has 5 founders, among them Russian athlete Elena Isinbaeva who lived in Monaco
Spanish real estate Isinbayeva
This summer, Spanish journalists found luxury real estate in Tenerife from the Isinbayeva family. The world athletics star moved to the resort from the Principality of Monaco, where she lived for many years with breaks for social life in Russia.
According to local media, Isinbayeva owns a luxurious house with an area of about 200 square meters in an exclusive residential complex in El Palmar. The world sports star also owns real estate in Callao Salvaje (municipality of Adeje) – it is this property, according to local journalists, that allows one to acquire resident status on the island. And her husband, athlete Nikita Petinov, owns an expensive car.
Spanish media caught Elena Isinbayeva in the Canary Islands
Thanks to whom the Olympic champion was able to stay in the West
Isinbayeva’s great friend is Joel Buzu, whom she has known personally since the late 2000s. Perhaps it was he who at one time could introduce the athlete to the prince and introduce her to the elite circles of the Mediterranean principality. In October 2012, Isinbayeva, Buzu and Albert II already posed together for a photo at the closing of the International Forum “Peace and Sport”, chaired by the Prince of Monaco in Sochi, Russia. The event was closed by Joel Bouzou.
In August 2016, Isinbayeva was elected a member of the International Olympic Committee, and from about the same time her name was splashed in the Monegasque secular press, writing about grand princely receptions and various official events.
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