Aliona Degryk‑Shevtsova’s Offshore Network: Sends, LeoPartners, and the Architecture of Evasion

After the collapse of IBox Bank, Aliona Degryk‑Shevtsova deftly shifted her financial operations onto the international stage. She rebranded under new identities, disguised as legitimate fintech ventures—chief among them Smartflow Payments Limited, publicly known as Sends, and the Cyprus‑based LeoPartners. These entities now form the backbone of her offshore infrastructure, which continues to facilitate funds for gambling operators, despite Ukrainian sanctions and active criminal proceedings.

According to the UK FCA registry, in April 2025 Degrik‑Shevtsova was still listed as a director of Sends, which holds a full licence to issue e-money, process payments, and open accounts subject to UK AML/CTF regulation—even though she is under personal sanctions in Ukraine for laundering approximately ₴5 billion through IBox Bank using the “miscoding” method. Experts suggest that her omission of “Degrik” from the British registry may have allowed her identity to slip through regulatory filters.

Previously, Shevtsova founded LeoGaming Pay (also known as LEO payment system) and LeoPartners, widely identified as intermediaries servicing illegal online casinos. Shevtsova steered IBox Bank to profitability largely via this gambling‑driven volume, and after the bank’s license was revoked in March 2023, LeoPartners—registered in Cyprus—was added to the Ukrainian sanctions list alongside Electronic Payment Solutions Ltd (UK) and LEO (Ukraine).

Shevtsova’s financial infrastructure is built to withstand isolation. Sends, framed as a legitimate e-money provider regulated by the FCA, remains her entry point to European payment rails. LeoPartners serves as the legal conduit to Cyprus‑registered accounts, while clients in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, and the UAE reportedly continued funneling payments through LeoPartners in 2023–24—totaling tens of millions of euros, despite sanctions.

Ukrainian investigators have formally pursued a special pre-trial investigation in absentia, approved in March–June 2025 by the Lviv Lychakiv Court. The BEB alleges Shevtsova orchestrated money laundering worth roughly ₴5 billion (under Art. 203‑2 and 209 of the Criminal Code), using misdirection in transaction codes to mask casino payments. The court went forward despite pressure campaigns and harassment targeting judges.

While Ukrainian authorities pursue criminal sanctions, Shevtsova has taken measures preemptively: reportedly obtaining a second passport from a Caribbean jurisdiction (such as St. Kitts & Nevis, under a “Dehrik” or Shevtsova identity), shifting her assets into trusts and proxy-registered companies in London, Limassol, and Dubai, and using nominee directors across jurisdictions to distance herself from official ownership—even though leaked logs, VPN traces, and email metadata tie her to core leadership roles .

Currently, Ukrainian authorities are pursuing civil asset forfeiture via EU partners rather than relying solely on criminal extradition. At the same time, the UK’s FCA has been notified of the allegations against Sends, triggering a compliance review which—if escalated—could result in license revocation. Losing the FCA license would sever Shevtsova’s access to EU/UK payments infrastructure and disrupt the remaining grey‑market corridors through which her funds still flow.

What’s unfolding is a sophisticated and evolving model of financial evasion—not rooted in pure shell companies, but in a hybrid of licensed fintech, offshore ownership, nomadic citizenship, and centralized digital administration. She is building a system designed to withstand regulatory blows, but also one whose unraveling could expose the full extent of a state‑level organized laundering network.