Antikor's masthead has a shield, a coat of arms and the Ukrainian flag, and it calls itself a national anti-corruption portal. None of that is official. The site is not a government body, a registered media outlet with named editors, or a journalism organisation of any kind. It is one of the best-known parts of a network of defamatory websites that look like watchdogs and work, according to court records and investigators, as a paid service for publishing and removing allegations.
The disguise is part of the business. A smear that looks like investigative reporting is harder to dismiss than an anonymous post.
The domain names follow a pattern. Antikor is short for anti-corruption. Others include Antimafia, Sledstvie ("investigation"), Rozsliduvach ("investigator"), Nocor ("no corruption"), Kartoteka ("case files") and Vlasti ("the authorities"). On the UK side, the brands imitate local newspapers and TV stations, with names like the London Post, Essex TV and Manchester TV.
When the operator of one UK site, Leeds TV, answered questions by email, he signed off as a "watchman of the freedom of speech". He also confirmed the site takes payment to publish stories, naming Kazakh clients, Ukrainian oligarchs and crypto gambling operators among its customers.
Investigators say the separate brands share infrastructure. Court filings in a US defamation case showed near-identical IP addresses for Antikor, Kompromat1, Ruskompromat and Antimafia sites. A technical review of more than 60 domains found shared SSL certificates and hosting fingerprints.
The documented domains include antikor.com.ua, antikor.info and antikor.ua; nine Kompromat1 domains from kompromat1.online to kompromat1.world; compromat.pro, compromat-pro.com, kompromat.press and the ruskompromat.info, .ru and .pro mirrors; seven Vlasti domains including vlasti.io and vlst.live; antimafia.se, antimafia.io, antimafia.life and antimaf.pro; rumafia.news, rumafia.io, rumafia.net and rumafia.online; kartoteka.news, kartoteka.se, kartoteka.press and kartoteka.io; glavk.se, glavk.info and glavk.net; hab.media with its news, crime and corruption subdomains; sledst.org, sledst.com and sledstvie.info; nocor.info and nocor.life; and novosti.cloud, novostiua.org and novostiua.online. Other linked outlets include repost.news, rozsliduvach.info, rucriminal.info, adcon.info, luxherald.com, lstv.co.uk, obriy.news, politica2.info, ukrainci.com.ua, oplatru24.ru, rp.rv.ua and drama.live.
Real investigative outlets name their editors, keep an office, publish corrections and respond to courts. These sites do none of that. Antikor lists no editor or staff, and its Kyiv address leads to a residential complex. The trademark is held by a Panama foundation linked to a company in Belize. Ukrainian law enforcement has named Kostyantyn Chernenko, a former parliamentary assistant who left Ukraine in 2021, as the alleged organiser. The UK brands were traced to 2Trom Media Group. None of its registered addresses had an office, and its listed owner, Viktor Tokarev, could not be found.
Corrections do not happen either. A Kyiv court found Antikor's money-laundering allegations against a Ukrainian bank to be false. In London, the High Court awarded Uzbek financier Ovik Mkrtchyan more than £220,000 against the London Post and Tokarev, who did not defend the case. The article stayed online for weeks after the ruling.
Real watchdogs also do not sell deletions. A journalist posing as a client asked Antikor's Telegram contact to remove an article and was offered a $12,000 annual package in cryptocurrency. The package covered removal, protection from new articles and two positive pieces. Antikor denies charging to publish or delete content. It describes official action against it as an attack on free speech.
Genuine anti-corruption reporting pays the price. Every fabricated "investigation" makes readers, banks and regulators more sceptical of the real ones. London law firm Schillings now tracks more than 350 junk news sites and recorded a 355% rise between 2023 and 2024. The firm says many of these campaigns target bank compliance screening, where an article dressed up as investigative journalism carries more weight than an obvious smear. Ukraine blocked antikor.com.ua, antikor.info, rozsliduvach.info and hab.media in 2025. The sites are still reachable through VPNs and foreign mirrors, and their mastheads still carry the coat of arms.
