Mykola Sushko likes to be seen against a Western backdrop. He has a Cypriot broker whose licence covers 26 European Union countries, an office in the City of London and two in Dubai, and villas designed by an American practice known for building homes for billionaires. Cyprus’s interior minister attended his project launch. An English-language Wikipedia article says he “headed” Ukraine’s securities regulator and “served” as Ukraine’s ambassador to Cyprus.
We checked who his Western partners really are. The answer is simple: the documents show no Western investor. What they show instead are hired contractors, a regulatory licence, distributed press releases and officials who came to a launch party.
Sushko is a Ukrainian-born trader and philanthropist based in Larnaca, Cyprus. In Ukraine he presents himself as a major new donor; one regional columnist called him “Ukraine’s own Soros”. He funds the country’s best-known journalism award and partners with PEN Ukraine.
A broker with an EU passport
Sushko’s most valuable Western asset is Statok Ltd, formerly SMSG Limited, registered in Larnaca in 2017. It is not the vague “financial analytics” business he describes in interviews with the outlets he supports. According to the CySEC register, Statok has held investment firm licence No. 403/21 since 26 July 2021. The licence covers receiving, transmitting and executing client orders, dealing on own account, safekeeping client assets and granting credit connected to transactions. Statok passports these services into Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Baltic states and some fifteen other EU member states (CySEC). The company says it serves professional clients in the EU as well as in the UAE and Ukraine (Statok).
In other words, a man whose former investment fund now owns a factory confiscated from the family of Russian-Greek oligarch Ivan Savvidi controls a European broker with access to the entire single market.
Statok’s directors are Sushko, two Ukrainians, Serhiy Matviychuk and Roman Bilych, and two Cypriots, Andreas Xenofontos and Gavriil Styllas (Companies Registry). A Gabriel Styllas with the same name founded the consultancy FiveComply, which according to his profile helps investment firms and funds with licensing and compliance (LinkedIn). He previously ran the Cypriot forex broker TopFX (Finance Magnates). If this is the same person, Statok’s board includes a professional licensing director from the forex industry, a familiar Cypriot arrangement when a regulator wants local faces. We have matched the identity only by name and profile; there is no documentary confirmation yet.
For European readers, the key question concerns CySEC’s “fit and proper” test, which requires directors of licensed firms to have an impeccable reputation. Is the regulator aware of two things?
First, Statok’s director was an ultimate beneficial owner of the Ukrainian closed-end fund Sterling. Sterling now owns 100% of PrJSC Pentopak, a packaging plant near Kyiv seized from the Savvidi family by Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court in 2024 and sold at a state auction (Pentopak ownership disclosure, Opendatabot). The registry records list Sushko as a removed beneficial owner, but the date of his exit is not public.
Second, Sushko’s Cypriot holding company held 41.48% of another fund, which later passed in full to Dmytro Stryzhov. Stryzhov is the founder of the Ukrainian security group Sheriff, whose subsidiary has been named by Ukrainian media in criminal investigations over state contracts (Clarity Project).
We have found no evidence that Sushko had business dealings with Savvidi. The questions are about disclosure and reputation, not about proven wrongdoing.
London, Dubai, Larnaca
Sushko’s core business is SFORS, a proprietary trading firm that trades US equities in pre market and extended hours. SFORS claims average daily turnover of $2 billion, a team of more than 600 and a 77% first-year profitability rate among its traders (SFORS). None of these figures has been independently verified.
On its legal-entities page, SFORS lists its Western network (SFORS): SM Seven Green Trading Ltd in Cyprus (HE 424613); 2055 LTD in the UK (16028431) at 29–30 Cornhill in the City of London; Equistream Trading DMCC in Dubai’s Swiss Tower (DMCC187649); and ST Solutions Ltd at the Dubai International Financial Centre (CL4999). 29–30 Cornhill is a managed-office building where desks are rented and many unrelated companies are registered (Tally Workspace, Companies House). The UK entity 2055 LTD was incorporated only in 2024, with “education” as its main activity, and Sushko himself is its person with significant control (Companies House). Also in the UK, GRAINITY LTD, formerly AGRO CHAIN LTD, appeared in 2025 with “wholesale of grain” as its activity; Sushko holds more than 75% (Companies House). Why a stock trader needs a London grain company has not been publicly explained.
Above all of this sits the Cypriot group Smarter. Sushko is listed as its owner, Anton Dziubenko as CEO, Pavlo Savchuk as CFO and Olga Biryuk as chief legal officer (Smarter). The group includes SFORS, Statok, the trading-software developer Pine Software and the property developer Founders Development (Smarter). Another Ukrainian, Mykola Rekhlytskyi, is listed as director of SM Seven Green Holding Ltd (Companies Registry). This Cypriot holding founded Sushko’s Ukrainian charity Smart Impact and held stakes in his Ukrainian funds. The group’s entire leadership is Ukrainian. No Western shareholder, partner or institutional investor appears in any public register or corporate disclosure.
The billionaires’ architect and a minister at the launch
The most prominent Western name near Sushko is Oppenheim Architecture, Chad Oppenheim’s Miami-based practice with a Swiss office near Basel. It designed Smartland, a community of 36 villas in Pyla near Larnaca valued at €50 million (Founders Development, Oppenheim Architecture). The local architect is the Cypriot firm Architecture Design Practice (ADP ). But Oppenheim is a hired contractor, not a partner or investor. A Cypriot property portal nonetheless described Sushko as “managing director of Oppenheim Architects” (Dom.com.cy), a title for which there is no evidence.
The Smartland launch in October 2024 was attended by Cyprus’s Interior Minister Konstantinos Ioannou, the president of the Larnaca District Local Government Organisation Angelos Hadjicharalambous, and Ukraine’s ambassador Ruslan Nimchynskyi (Cyprus Mail). Ambassador Nimchynskyi could hardly have known that English-language Wikipedia would soon “appoint” Sushko to his own post for 2020–2022 (Wikipedia). The same article claims Sushko chaired Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission in 2015–2017. In fact the commission was headed by Tymur Khromaiev (Ekonomichna Pravda), and Nimchynskyi was ambassador from 2020 (Wikipedia). We have not established who wrote these entries.
One detail matters for understanding how the Western legend is built. The Cyprus Mail piece on Smartland ran in the Company News section, which carries corporate announcements. The same text was distributed through the commercial press-release wire Newsfile Corp and appeared on Yahoo Finance, among other places (Yahoo Finance). We found no independent coverage of Sushko in Western business or investigative media. His Western media footprint consists of his own press releases.
What lies behind the facade
Strip away the press releases, the architects and the officials, and a simple structure remains. Money enters Cypriot holding companies under the SM Seven Green name, run by Ukrainians. From Cyprus it flows into Ukrainian closed-end venture funds (Sterling, Lira, City Invest Development) and through them into Kyiv property development. Later, these funds turn up in the hands of Liliia Penova, the beneficial owner of the confiscated Savvidi plant, or of Sheriff founder Dmytro Stryzhov (Opendatabot, Opendatabot). In parallel, the Cypriot holding finances charities that received more than UAH 49 million (about €1 million) in 2024 (Opendatabot, Opendatabot). That philanthropy made Sushko a patron of the Georgiy Gongadze Prize, Ukraine’s leading journalism award, and a partner of PEN Ukraine.
In this scheme the West is not an investor; it is scenery. That is exactly why it is Sushko’s most vulnerable point. A single question from CySEC about Sterling would carry more weight than a dozen Ukrainian articles. A single source-of-funds query from a correspondent bank would matter more than any DMCA takedown notice, and one has already been filed against coverage of him (Special Register).
Absolution is sending questions to Mykola Sushko, Statok Ltd and SFORS. They concern the date of his exit from the Sterling fund, the transfer of the City Invest Development stake to Dmytro Stryzhov, the origin of the fictitious government posts on Wikipedia, and whether CySEC has been informed. We will publish their responses in full.