In November 2021, FinTelegram issued a Request 4 Information regarding the Cyprus Papel Group. At the time, Papel operated as an online marketing company. In early 2022, the Papel.com reappeared as a payment processor operated by the Lithuanian E-Money Institution TBF FINANCE UAB of Artiom Saltanov. Since a few months, Papel is a Turkish payment scheme, operated by the Turkish E-Money Institution Papel Elektronik Para ve Ödeme Hizmetleri A.Ş. Here is the update!
Latest Updates
Papel is a small Turkish Cypriot payment processor. According to the latest Similarweb statistics, less than 5,000 people visited the website between March and May 2023. In 2020, Papel started as and crypto exchange and payment services provider and since then has a remarkable track record with changing legal entities.
We were contacted by Papel founder, Cyprus National Ferit Samuray, and his legal representative. In a letter we were informed that there would be no corporate link between Papel and the FCA-regulated e-Money institution Monitox Ltd (read the short narrative below), a company controlled by the Estonian Maksim Asanov.
Papel founder Ferit Samuray is one of the directors of Monitox. However, he retired as a director of Cyprus-based PAPEL (CY) MARKETING SERVICES LIMITED in early 2023. Facts.
The claim that the Lithuanian e-Money institution TBF Finance UAB would act as the operator of Papel would be false, Samuray argued. Interesting, because on the archived website and in Google Cache you can see until today that TBF Finance was named as the owner and operator of Papel until recently. These are facts.
In the beginning in 2020, the Papel.com website offered crypto trading and payment services without having an authorization to do so. The archived websites provide the necessary evidence. These are facts that are denied by Ferit Samuray in his letter to FinTelegram.
Ferit Samuray is also the director of the Estonian Papel Exchange OÜ which has not filed financial statements for years. For this they are threatened with a fine by the Estonian Companies Register.
Key Data
| Trading names | Papel TBF Finance |
| Business activity | Payment processor e-Money Institution |
| Domains | https://papel.cy https://papel.com https://papel.com.tr https://tbffinance.com |
| Social media | LinkedIn Papel LinkedIn Papel Turkey LinkedIn TB Finance |
| Legal entities | Papel (CY) Marketing Services Ltd TBF FINANCE, UAB Papel Elektronik Para ve Ödeme Hizmetleri A.Ş. Papel Exchange OÜ Papel (UK) Technology Ltd |
| Jurisdictions | Lithuania, Turkey |
| Authorizations | Payment institution regulated by Bank of Lithuania e-Money Institution application at CBRT |
| Contact data | +370 6453 4636 +371 2576 6233 +48 22 208 7744 |
| Related individuals | Artiom Saltanov, Ferit Samuray, David Clark, Maksim Asanov, Mihaela Pascu |
| Related schemes | Monitox |
Short Narrative
Until 2021, the domains and websites Papel.cy and Papel.com were operated by Papel (CY) Marketing Services Ltd, an online marketing company in Cyprus. FinTelegram exposed that Papel also acted as an unregulated payment processor. From the early websites of Papel.cy, you can see that it offered Bitcoins trading and payment services before it focused on marketing and influencer services. The company was founded and controlled by Ferit Samuray (LinkedIn). Today Mihaela Pascu is the sole company director.
In 2020, the domain Papel.com was redirected to the domain Papel.cy. In 2022, the domain Papel.com has been owned and operated by TBF FINANCE, UAB, which is authorized in Lithuania by the Bank of Lithuania as a payment institution. This entity also trades as TBF Finance with a separate website.
In 2023, Papel.com is operated through PAPEL ELEKTRONİK PARA VE ÖDEME HİZMETLERİ A.Ş, registered in Istanbul, Turkey, as an e-money institution. However, the User Agreement does not indicate when it became effective.
How the domain transfer to the Lithuanian entity worked, we cannot determine at this time. Likewise, we do not know if and how the Lithuanian and Cypriot businesses are connected.
The Monitox Connection
We have discovered Ferit Samuray as a director in the high-risk payment processor Monitox Ltd, an e-Money Institution regulated with reference number 901012 by the FCA. Monitox is controlled by Estonian Maksim Asanov. Whistleblower informed us that Monitox is still connected to the “new” Papel Group. We can neither confirm nor deny this.
The Papel Group with Ferit Samuray comprises other entities, such as Papel Marketing UK Limited or the forex-focused Papel FX Ltd in Cyprus. Samuray is also the director of Smarttekk Payment Solutions Ltd in Cyprus.
Share Information
We would like to know more about Papel Group, Ferit Samuray, and their partners. If you have any information, please share it with us through our whistleblower platform, Whistle42.
