Capital flows from Ukraine through the UK and the Olena Smirnova connection: who helps Zaki Farooq bypass bans via PayFuture
It emerged that PayFuture, the British payment system, is owned by Zaki Farooq, now accused of defrauding clients of £3 million.
Zaki Farooq, who is banned from officially working in the UK, was allegedly assisted by his common-law wife – a Ukrainian woman named Olena Smirnova. It is she who is registered as the owner of the parent company that owns this payment service.
A scandal is gaining momentum in Britain around the notorious businessman Zaki Farooq, who "lightened the wallets" of his contractors by 3 million pounds. He has been banned from doing business until July 2024. However, this does not stop him. He is confidently promoting his payment system PayFuture in the markets of India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and other developing countries. Despite the ban, the parent company that owns this payment service is based in the UK. As investigators note, few people know that Kyiv resident Olena Smirnova helps Zaki control PayFuture.
According to him, Zari Farooq intentionally went bankrupt to avoid paying debts.
Zaki Farooq, who in all his social networks calls himself the co-owner of PayFuture, robbed clients, partners, and banks in the company where he worked for 22 years – Computrad (Europe) Limited – of 3 million pounds. Since 2009, the main profile of Computrad has been IT solutions for the verification and identification of users of online gaming and casino services. Computrad was liquidated in 2017 due to its inability to settle with creditors. The swindler admitted guilt, as evidenced by his signature in the liquidators’ report. Zaki was not able to get away unscathed – he was disqualified for 7 years for dishonest behavior, stripped of the right to hold directorial positions in companies and to do business until July 2024.
In the British registry, you can see who actually owns PayFuture: Olena Smirnova has been the director of a company named in a way that surprisingly points to Zaki himself – 9786 Zaki Limited (14645620) since February 7, 2023. In the same registry, we learn that this firm owns 50% of Payfuture Holdings Limited – the parent company that owns the PayFuture payment service. Experts believe that there is no doubt – Smirnova manages and owns a company that directly points to ownership by Zaki Farooq.
Thus, Smirnova may play the role of the nominal owner of the shareholder company Payfuture Holdings Limited and secure Zaki Farooq’s interests in the business. This allows her to help him bypass the imposed restrictions.
The registered address of Olena Smirnova’s company – 48 Berkeley Waye, Hounslow, Middlesex, TW5 9HL – matches, surprisingly, with Zaki’s address in Britain, where his disqualification as an entrepreneur is recorded. Moreover, in some archival tweets, Zaki Farooq’s geotags from this London district of Hounslow are preserved, so we can assume that this was or is his actual place of residence in London, along with Olena Smirnova. The reason for our interest in this topic is the possibility of questionable PayFuture operations with cryptocurrencies in the Ukrainian segment and the use of this system to move capital out of Ukraine. And this is already a matter of national security.