One day after collaborating with Expert gaming group to provide financial support to developers in Saudi Arabia, Xsolla is now under fire because its CEO treats the company like his “personal piggy bank.”
For BloombergSix former executives have filed lawsuits against Alexander “Shurick” Agapitov since 2019. Two of them have raised concerns about how he uses the gaming-focused trading platform’s finances, such as allegedly transferring $120 million in company money to his personal accounts between 2021 and 2023.
Of that, about $70 million (or 64 percent) was transferred in 2023. Documents obtained by the outlet state that Agapitov would then send up to $25 million to the account per transfer, often one to three weeks after depositing money into his accounts.
In total, he reportedly repaid $102 million of that transferred money over a six-month period. While most of that amount went toward personal loans, $10 million was said to have gone toward “residential development” (read: a second mansion next to the first).
The Legal Side of Xsolla and Agapitov's Financial Saga
David Stelzer, Xsolla's current chairman, dismissed Bloomberg's claims and called the documents “inaccurate. Xsolla manages its financial affairs responsibly and in full compliance with applicable laws and regulations.”
It further stated that comparing the alleged figures “with the company's overall revenues for the period in question is highly misleading and creates a fundamentally distorted picture of the company's financial activities.”
Nevertheless, Bloomberg notes that two former executives, former vice president of global accounting Emil Aliyev and CFO Joe Chang, were fired individually for inquiring about Xsolla’s financial data. Their firings later led to wrongful termination lawsuits filed on their behalf by the former head of personnel and vice president of product.
A lawsuit filed in 2022 alleges that layoffs were commonplace and that Agapitov would “fire executives without warning if they raised complaints about potentially illegal activity.”
While some of these lawsuits have been settled or dismissed, their sheer number seems to indicate that the popular trading company (used by numerous developers) has financial skeletons on its books.
You can read Bloomberg's full report on Xsolla Here.