Narrative: Court cases elevate concerns over Xsolla CEO’s utilize of company money

Exchange: This text was amended to more accurately talk the allegations offered in Bloomberg’s long-established allege.

A day after teaming with Savvy Video games Group to provide monetary give a rob to developers in Saudi Arabia, Xsolla is now underneath fire for its CEO allegedly treating the corporate worship his “personal piggy bank.”

Per Bloomberg, six inclined executives have confidence filed lawsuits in opposition to Xsolla or CEO Aleksandr “Shurick” Agapitov since 2019. Two of those lawsuits voiced concerns in regards to the corporate’s monetary practices or how Agapitov ancient money from the game-focused commerce platform, with one allegation claiming he transferred $120 million in company money to his deepest accounts between 2021 and 2023.

Of that, in the case of $70 million (or 64 percent) was transferred in 2023. Paperwork bought by the outlet claim Agapitov would later send as a lot as $25 million attend to the yarn per switch, generally one-to-three weeks after inserting money into his accounts.

In whole, he’s allegedly returned $102 million of that transferred money over a six-month duration. Whereas most of that went in direction of deepest loans, $10 million is claimed to had been directed to “residential construction” (read: a 2d mansion next to his first).

The criminal aspect of Xsolla and Agapitov’s monetary saga

David Stelzer, Xsolla’s most modern president, disregarded the claims to Bloomberg and known as the documents “inaccurate.” He stated “Xsolla manages its financial affairs responsibly and in full compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”

Additional, he claimed inserting the alleged figures “against the company’s overall revenue for the period, is highly misleading and creates a fundamentally distorted picture of the company’s financial activities.”

Nonetheless, Bloomberg notes that two inclined executives, ex-world accounting VP Emil Aliyev and CFO Joe Chang, had been in my idea fired for inquiring about Xsolla’s financials. Their firings later resulted in wrongful termination fits on their behalf by the inclined chief other folks officer and product VP.

A swimsuit filed in 2022 claims firings had been par for the course, and that Agapitov would “terminate executives without any warning if they made any complaints about potentially unlawful activity.” A pair of of those fits have confidence now been settled or disregarded.

It is probably you’ll perhaps perhaps perhaps read Bloomberg’s plump allege on Xsolla right here.

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