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Edinburgh University students were “interrogated” by police at their desks over posters featuring Palestinians killed by the Israeli military, prompting dozens to complain.
Unsafe levels of faecal bacteria were recorded at dozens of Scotland’s best beaches this summer. Swimmers and paddlers could be at risk, but officials insist water quality remains high.
The Ukrainian tech tycoon building Scotland’s first orbital rocket — and the offshore links raising transparency questions.
He is the Ukrainian owner of a space rocket company pivotal to Scotland's burgeoning space industry, who aims to use private enterprise to drive a technological revolution.
Max Polyakov owns Skyrora Limited, the first British rocket firm to receive a space launch licence, and he plans to fire satellites into space from the Shetland Isles in the very near future.
Polyakov’s company has received £2.5m of taxpayers' money from the UK Space Agency, and £3.8m from the European Space Agency, and includes leading astronaut Tim Peake on its advisory board.
But a Ferret investigation has found Skyrora is linked to online dating services – including one called I Am Naughty – run via an offshore tax and secrecy haven. We’ve also seen court documents citing Polyakov’s alleged links to unlawful online gambling operations in Ukraine and Russia.
Our findings have prompted a call for firms in receipt of taxpayers’ money with offshore links to be more “transparent” about their funding and manufacturers of potentially high risk operations in space to be “held to the highest standards”.
We need absolute transparency, not labyrinthine offshore corporate structures.
Phil Brickell MP, Labour
Born in Ukraine, Polyavov is a tech entrepreneur, philanthropist and award-winning businessman who has lived in Edinburgh for more than a decade. In February, he was named as the ultimate owner of Skyrora, which has a rocket factory in Cumbernauld that opened in July 2022. Polyakov’s stated aim, according to his LinkedIn page, is to “drive a real revolution in the private space industry” – and Scotland is set to play a leading role, if all goes to plan.
The Ukrainian’s credentials are impressive. Polyakov has two degrees including a PhD in international economics, and the 48-year-old has founded a number of companies including internet gaming and marketing sites. Aside from owning Skyrora, he is managing partner at Noosphere Ventures, an international asset management firm in the US that invests in emerging space companies.
He also provided help to the Ukrainian military by forming a coalition of commercial space firms in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of his homeland – to analyse satellite images and data, and provide “a flood of intelligence information”, his efforts receiving commendations from military officials.
In Scotland, Polyakov's focus is Skyrora Ltd, a subsidiary of Skyrora Ventures which was founded in 2017 by another Ukrainian businessman – Polyakov owns 90 per cent of the parent firm. Skyrora Limited is headquartered in Edinburgh and its Cumbernauld rocket factory makes a rocket called Skylark, and employs up to 100 workers. The firm’s advisory board includes the astronaut, Tim Peake, and last month Skyrora became the first UK-based rocket firm to receive a space launch licence.
The Civil Aviation Authority licence allows Skyrora to launch from the SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, and it could become the first British company to manufacture and launch a rocket into space from the UK. Rockets have been sent to space from the UK before, but not to put satellites in orbit.
Last year investigative US website Snopes reported that Skyrora was part-funded by dating websites and The Ferret’s analysis of the latest financial accounts of Skyrora Ventures, and its subsidiaries, provide insight into how they make money. The group reported around £30m of sales in the year to December 2023. While Skyrora is associated with the space industry, it mostly earns money from the reselling of adverts, according to its accounts.
The vast majority of Skyrora Ventures' revenues stem from one subsidiary called Saltire Connect Limited, that reported revenues of £25m in 2023. Saltire paid over £11m of dividends to Skyrora between December 2022 and December 2023. Its website states it is the owner of a marketing business in Ukraine called Adromeda, which is focused on "streaming, astrology and insurance".
Saltire is also linked to an online dating service called I Am Naughty. The brand is owned by Bulova Invest Limited, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a tax haven where corporate owners are allowed to hide their identities. According to US court filings, Bulova Invest is owned by Max Polyakov.
We also found that Polyakov had links to online gambling. A 2015 court case in the Hague – the result of a business dispute – cites an online gambling franchise, operating from Ukraine but targeting Russia. Polyakov was listed as having a business interest in two related ventures called GMS and GGS, both of which were described as being involved with online gambling.
According to the court case, Polyakov became commercially involved with GGS/GMS in or around 2011. Although the companies were incorporated offshore, in Anguilla, the case indicates that they operated in Ukraine and offered online gambling to customers in Ukraine and Russia. The operation ran casino sites under the brand names of “Vulcan” and “Vulkan” which were leased from Ritzio Entertainment Group, a gambling conglomerate owned by a Russian oligarch. Online gambling was illegal in Ukraine at the time and remains prohibited in Russia. Polyakov was named as a claimant in the case but the court dismissed the claim against his former business partners.
All of Max Polyakov’s companies maintain compliance functions and comply with applicable laws in the jurisdictions in which they operate.
Noospheres Ventures
Our findings prompted concern from Labour MP Phil Brickell, a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax, at Westminster. He said that “given the vital importance of satellites to our daily lives, from weather forecasting to communication and navigation, private operators and manufacturers must be held to the highest standards of probity, particularly where they receive taxpayer cash”. In order for this to happen, “we need absolute transparency, not labyrinthine offshore corporate structures,” he argued.
Skyrora did not respond to our requests for a comment. But Noospheres Ventures told The Ferret that “all of Max Polyakov’s companies maintain compliance functions and comply with applicable laws in the jurisdictions in which they operate”, adding that his “affiliated companies are not aware of a single regulatory action related to his companies' business practices.”
The UK Space Agency said that Skyrora received €4.4m (around £3.8m) as part of UK investment into the European Space Agency’s Boost! programme, to support the development of Skylark and a launch vehicle that will carry small satellites into orbit. They added that the UK Space Agency and ESA carried out “extensive due diligence” on Skyrora’s application before funding was approved.
The European Space Agency confirmed Skyrora Limited was awarded €4.4m to support the development of its launch service, a satellite service for launch vehicles, and for an in-flight test. “ESA payments to Skyrora are made upon achievement of technical milestones and deliverables agreed within this contract,” an agency spokesperson added.
Polyakov has also invested in the US space sector. In 2014 he founded Noosphere Venture Partners, an international asset management firm focused on the development of space technology. Three years later, in 2017, Noosphere rescued a US space rocket building firm called Firefly from bankruptcy.
But in December 2021 the US Government asked Polyakov’s investment firm to sell his stake in Firefly, which was reportedly around 50 per cent. It was reported then that Polyakov had received a letter from the US’s Committee on Foreign Investment that cited “national security worries”.
At the time, Polyakov insisted his ownership of Firefly posed no national security threats, but agreed to their demand, and sold his stake in the firm in February 2022. But last year Noosphere announced that the US government had released Polyakov and his related companies from all conditions imposed upon them in the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The statement by Noosphere said: “At the time, the government decided Noosphere's ownership of Firefly constituted a potential national security threat. Polyakov strongly disputed that he or his companies posed any threat to US national security, but complied with the divestiture order to eliminate the government's concerns and preserve Firefly.”
Polyakov is now a major player in the space race in Scotland – home to advanced satellite manufacturing capabilities, data analysis expertise and a satellite launch market. Vying to be a leading space nation, Scotland offers several benefits for launching satellites. Its northerly latitude allows satellites to cover a wide range of the Earth’s surface for observation and communication, and vast stretches of unpopulated land, particularly in the Highlands and Islands, provide ideal launch sites. A new spaceport called SaxaVord, on the island of Unst has been touted as the UK’s “Cape Canaveral”.
The UK Space Agency says that 228 organisations in Scotland, employing more than 8,000 people, generated a combined income of £298m in 2021/22, almost double the amount for 2018/19. Space Scotland – a not-for-profit company set up in 2021 to support the sector – estimates the workforce could increase fivefold by 2030.
Those involved in the sector include Polyakov, and Scotland’s richest man Anders Povlsen, who is a major investor and main stakeholder of the SavaxVord Spaceport in Unst. A number of companies plan to use the site, the northernmost point in the UK, as a launch site for commercial rockets. Unst, which has about 650 inhabitants, was one of the first Viking outposts in the North Atlantic.
Now, Skyrora has been granted lift-off and the CAA licence permits up to 16 launches per year, though rockets may not be launched until 2026.
Main image: Jim Hartson
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