Riga FC and Pafos are separate on paper, but financial records, shared personnel and repeated player movements reveal a wider network linked to Sergei Lomakin, spanning Latvia, Cyprus, Russia and the UAE, and raising questions over UEFA’s multi-club ownership rules.
When Riga FC were drawn to face Pafos FC in the UEFA Conference League, the reaction in Cyprus and Russia was telling. One Cypriot headline presented the fixture as “Lomakin against Lomakin”.
Officially, it is nothing of the sort.
Riga and Pafos are separate clubs with separate ownership structures. Sergei Lomakin, the Russian billionaire whose name has followed Riga for much of its modern history, holds no official position at the Latvian club. Public records do not currently establish him as Riga’s beneficial owner. Nor do Riga and Pafos form part of a declared multi-club ownership group.
Look beyond the formal structures, however, and the separation becomes considerably less straightforward.
Over the past decade, the two clubs have existed within a remarkably interconnected football ecosystem stretching from Latvia to Cyprus, Moscow and Dubai. Money, players, coaches and executives have repeatedly travelled through it. At different points, Lomakin or companies connected to him appear at several of its most important nodes.
At Riga, one of those connections can be measured precisely.
€2.37 million from Dubai
Riga FC’s 2021 annual report identifies one donor dramatically larger than all the others. LF Group DMCC, a company registered in the United Arab Emirates, gave the club €2,371,538. The money was unrestricted and represented almost 30 per cent of Riga’s total reported income for the year.
The identity of the company is important because US Securities and Exchange Commission filing dated December 2021 identifies Sergei Lomakin as the sole direct beneficial owner of 100% of LF Group DMCC.
By then, LF Group was already a familiar entity also in Paphos. In 2020, the company and Pafos FC announced a major sponsorship agreement under which LF Group branding would appear on the club’s kit, around its stadium and at club facilities. The same Lomakin-owned Dubai company therefore had documented financial relationships with both Riga and Pafos.
The Riga payment also came shortly after a significant change in Lomakin’s relationship with Latvia. In December 2020, Latvian government added Lomakin to list of personae non gratae, prohibiting him entry to the country. There is no evidence that the LF Group payment was unlawful or that its UAE origin was intended to circumvent Lomakin’s exclusion from Latvia. But the annual report establishes that, in the following financial year, a company wholly beneficially owned by Lomakin supplied Riga with more than €2.3 million.
And the club had already been relying on foreign financing before that.
The unnamed lender
Riga’s earlier accounts reveal another substantial source of money whose identity is not disclosed. By the end of 2019, the club carried approximately €4.37 million in long-term borrowing. In 2020 this increased to approximately €4.75 million. The accompanying report is unusually explicit about where the money came from – Riga was operating using interest-free borrowed funds provided by a non-resident legal person.
In other words, several years before its revenues reached their current level, millions of euros were being supplied to Riga by an unnamed foreign company at zero interest. The debt remained substantial at the end of 2021, when Riga reported €4.596 million in long-term borrowing.
Then the financial model changed.
In February 2022, Riga reported signing a $6 million advertising agreement. Its annual economic-activity income subsequently jumped from €4.16 million in 2021 to €12.26 million in 2022. At the same time, the club’s historic borrowing virtually disappeared. Its 2022 accounts record approximately €4.59 million of legal-person borrowing as repaid or extinguished, leaving only a negligible long-term balance.
Another $6 million advertising agreement followed in January 2023. In January 2024, Riga reported signing one worth €12 million. Curiously, the published annual reports do not identify the counterparties to those agreements. Nor do the available accounts establish that the old foreign lender, LF Group and the later advertisers are connected. They may be entirely different entities. But together they trace an unusual evolution in Riga’s financing, consisting of millions in interest-free borrowing from an unidentified foreign company; a €2.37 million donation from Lomakin’s Dubai company; then advertising agreements worth millions more with unidentified counterparties.
The obvious question of who was behind each source of money becomes particularly relevant because Lomakin’s connection to Riga did not apparently disappear when he was prohibited from entering Latvia.
In October 2025, Latvian public broadcaster LSM examined Lomakin’s relationship with Riga directly. Club executive director Romāns Lajuks acknowledged that Lomakin remained interested in Riga and “helps where he can”, while stressing that he held no official position at the club.
Riga captain Antonijs Černomordijs described something more tangible. He said players had met Lomakin during preseason preparations and European matches outside Latvia and that Lomakin had addressed the dressing room by video after Riga won the Latvian championship.
On the other side, a former Pafos executive has also provided an account of Lomakin’s practical involvement in the club. In a 2025 interview, former chief executive Pavel Gognidze said Lomakin communicated closely with the entire sporting department, including the head coach, although he would not instruct a coach to select a particular player. When asked about a “chain of clubs” in different countries, Gognidze said Lomakin supported football projects around the world according to a strategy that had not been explained publicly.
The Dubov link
Roman Dubov appeared at Riga almost at the beginning of the club’s rise.
In 2016, World Football Business announced that it had been appointed to work with Riga until 2018. Its remit was broad, covering sponsorship and marketing, squad construction, academy development, supporter relations and other aspects of the club’s operation. The announcement also stated that Dubov had joined Riga’s board.
His next major football project was Pafos.
By 2018, an investor statement published in Cyprus presented Lomakin and Dubov as the businessmen behind Pafos and nominated Lomakin as club president. Dubov subsequently became the club’s chairman and remains economically tied to it. Pafos’s more recent financial reporting records a multimillion-euro shareholder loan from him.
The formal corporate picture has changed over time, and current publicly accessible records do not provide enough information to state that Lomakin remains a legal owner of Pafos. Historically, however, the connection is explicit – a man formally involved in running Riga subsequently became one of the central figures at Pafos, alongside Lomakin. The clubs themselves then developed a considerable sporting relationship and player traffic between the clubs goes back years.
The relationship was not always described simply as informal cooperation. In August 2019, Pafos announced Jeremy Steele as technical director of TSI and said he would have full responsibility for first-team affairs, scouting and youth development across “all three teams of the group”. Roman Dubov welcomed him to what the announcement called the “Total Sports Group”.
Steele’s profile with the Association of Professional Football Analysis identifies the clubs as Pafos, Riga and Rodina. It says his role involved coach and player recruitment, performance analysis and academy pathways across the three clubs.
Pafos continued to use group terminology after Steele left in January 2021. The club appointed former Spain and Real Madrid defender Michel Salgado as head of football the following month and described him as a partner of TSI Football Holding. In June 2021, Salgado became adviser to the TSI Football Group, with Pafos saying he would oversee the development of all its clubs, including their methodology, training processes and organisational structure.
That history had a recent echo in Riga. Salgado attended Riga’s 2-1 derby victory over RFS on 17th June 2026 and told TV4 that he had developed relationships with Riga personnel through the club’s training camps in Dubai. He said he had attended the previous season’s title celebration, had been invited to the derby and regarded such visits as an opportunity to assess players in markets that might later be of interest.
Antonijs Černomordijs spent time at Pafos. Deniss Rakels, Vladislavs Gabovs, Kevin Berigaud and Artūrs Karašausks are among players whose careers connected the two clubs. More recently, Costa Rican international Anthony Contreras moved from Riga to Pafos on loan before returning, while goalkeeper Athanasios Papadoudis moved from Pafos to Riga in 2026. Transfermarkt records more than a dozen movements between the clubs, many of them loans.
In 2023, Sportacentrs referred to Pafos simply as Riga’s sadraudzības komanda – roughly, its “partner” or “friendly” club – without treating the relationship as something requiring further explanation. That same article concerned another club whose place in this story may be just as interesting – FK Auda.
Riga’s other relationship
On paper, Auda is straightforwardly separate from Riga – the company operating the club is owned by Russian businessman Andrey Vilenkin. On the football side, the boundary is considerably more porous.
For several seasons Riga has regularly placed players at Auda. The list includes Reginaldo Ramires, Abdulrahman Taiwo, Alexander Ogunji, Karl Gameni Wassom, Ousmane Camara, Kemehlo Nguena and others. Some have returned to Riga after developing at Auda. Ramires is an obvious example – he excelled there before returning to Riga and becoming one of the Virslīga’s leading strikers.
Coaches have travelled the same route. After leading Auda to success, Tomislav Stipic became Riga’s head coach. One year later, Simo Valakari did the same. At the time, Sportacentrs described Valakari’s move as Riga once again “promoting” Auda’s manager.
But Auda’s connections to Lomakin’s entourage extend considerably further than Riga.
The Dubai connection
In recent seasons, players have arrived at Auda not only from Riga but also from Pafos and United FC in Dubai. Mamadou Kane arrived from Pafos after a career that had already taken him through another club associated with Lomakin – Rodina Moscow.
Arona Fall joined Auda from United FC. Moussa Ouedraogo had previously made the same move, while Aboubakar Karamoko travelled in the opposite direction, from Auda to United.
The coaching traffic is even more conspicuous. Auda’s current head coach, Didier Zanetti, previously worked at United, first with its second team and then its senior side. Assistant Kyllian Jaubert followed a similar route.
United itself is another project with documented links to Lomakin’s business network. In a 2024 interview, United president Ilie Cebanu described LF Group as the investment partner behind the project. He said the club’s principal sponsor supplied more than 80% of its financing, held a place on its board and participated in decisions concerning the club’s development.
While the precise current legal ownership of United requires further clarification, its financial connection to LF Group is public, which gives LF Group documented relationships with three clubs in this story:
- Pafos through sponsorship.
- Riga through a €2.37 million donation.
- United through investment and dominant sponsorship.
United’s recruitment has also created a more direct sporting link with Pafos. Moustapha Name joined the Dubai club in September 2025 after returning to Pafos from a short loan at CFR Cluj, while Willy Semedo arrived from Omonia in July 2026 after having represented Pafos between 2021 and 2023. These moves do not establish common control, but they add to the circulation of players through clubs associated with the same wider football environment.
Rodina Moscow
Rodina Moscow is the least ambiguous club in the network. It has described the organisation as Lomakin’s project and Russian football reporting routinely identifies him as its investor or owner.
Players have moved between United and Rodina. So have staff. The most interesting route, however, again passes through Auda.
Zoran Zeljkovic led Auda during one of the most successful periods in the Latvian club’s history. In February 2025, he became head coach of Rodina. Members of his staff followed him and the goalkeeping coach Dino Šeremet provides an almost perfect illustration of the circulation within this wider football environment:
Auda → Rodina → United.
Players show similar patterns. Kane’s route ran through Pafos, Rodina and Auda. Other players have moved between United and Rodina or their development teams. Granted, individually, none of these moves is remarkable. Football is an industry in which players and coaches frequently follow familiar employers and recruitment networks. But one would be challenged to shrug off that, collectively, the pattern becomes harder to overlook.
Friends with benefits or part of the same family?
The current public record does not show Riga, Pafos, United, Rodina and Auda as one declared ownership group, while Auda has a separately identified owner. Historical material nevertheless shows that Riga, Pafos and Rodina were once treated as part of a common TSI sporting structure, with senior personnel given responsibilities across the clubs.
United and Auda appear to have entered the wider network through different routes. United is financially connected to LF Group, while Auda’s place is most clearly visible through the movement of players, coaches and other staff. It is therefore more accurate to describe a documented three-club sporting core surrounded by a broader and less formally defined network.
Yet sporting and financial relationships repeatedly cross those formal boundaries. Riga and Pafos exchange players almost on a whim, and share a history involving Lomakin, LF Group and Dubov. Riga and Auda exchange large numbers of players and coaches. Auda recruits from Riga, Pafos and United. United is financially connected to LF Group and exchanges personnel with Auda and Rodina. Rodina openly identifies Lomakin as the figure behind its project. Pafos, Rodina and United have all supplied players to Auda, while Auda has supplied coaches or staff to Riga, Rodina and United.
The available evidence points to a network whose core was once organised openly at group level, although the present extent of that coordination cannot be established from public records. That distinction becomes important because European football’s rules are not limited to ownership written on paper and Riga and Pafos did draw each other in the Conference League.
What did UEFA examine?
Article 5 of UEFA’s 2026/27 Conference League regulations prevents a person or entity from being directly or indirectly involved in the management, administration or sporting performance of more than one participating club.
It also covers the ability, “by any means”, to exercise decisive influence over the decision-making of more than one club, which is a deliberately broader test than common ownership.
So, are Riga FC and Pafos conceivably in breach of anything?
Nothing seen by Baltic Football News establishes that Riga or Pafos breached UEFA rules. There is no public UEFA decision finding that Lomakin controls either club, much less both. Historical financing does not establish current decisive influence, and frequent transfers do not prove common control. But Riga and Pafos were required to demonstrate compliance with UEFA’s rules as of 1st March 2026 and throughout the competition.
Their October meeting therefore creates questions that did not matter quite so visibly while the clubs occupied different corners of European football.
What did Riga disclose to UEFA about Lomakin?
Did it disclose the €2.37 million received from his company, his continuing contact with the team and any subsequent financial relationship?
Who supplied the millions in interest-free foreign lending recorded in Riga’s earlier accounts?
Who are the counterparties behind its $6 million, $6 million and €12 million advertising agreements?
What is Lomakin’s current economic or decision-making role at Pafos?
Did UEFA examine the earlier TSI Football Group structure and establish when its group-wide sporting arrangements ended?
What evidence did Riga and Pafos provide that the responsibilities previously held across the clubs by Jeremy Steele and Michel Salgado no longer created direct or indirect influence by the 1st March 2026 deadline?
And did UEFA examine the extensive transfer and personnel relationships running through Riga, Pafos and the wider network?
Separate on paper
There is a temptation to reduce the upcoming October fixture to “Lomakin versus Lomakin”. It makes a good headline but overreaches what available evidence allows. The more interesting story may be this “shadow” or “informal” MCO setup that the clubs in questions seem to be a part of.
A company wholly beneficially owned by Lomakin gave Riga €2.37 million and sponsored Pafos. The same business group subsequently became the financial partner behind United in Dubai. A former Riga board member became chairman and shareholder of Pafos. Lomakin remained in contact with Riga players after being barred from Latvia. Rodina openly identifies him with its project.
Historical announcements also show that the relationship once involved a formal group-level sporting structure. Between 2019 and 2021, TSI appointed senior figures with responsibilities extending across Riga, Pafos and Rodina. Salgado’s presence at the Riga derby in June 2026 does not show that this arrangement continues, but it provides a recent example of contact between Riga and someone formerly charged with overseeing the development of TSI’s clubs.
Around those relationships sits an unusually active market for people. Players travel between Riga and Pafos. Riga players develop at Auda. Pafos and United players arrive there too. Auda coaches progress to Riga and Rodina. United coaches arrive at Auda. Staff move from Auda through Rodina to United.
And this networks keeps growing too. Latvian second tier side Riga Mariners are established under the ownership of former head of Riga FC academy, and media reports sometimes extend Lomakin’s football portfolio to clubs including NK Celje, Akritas Chlorakas, Senegal’s Teungueth and potentially Loznica in Serbia.
So, when Riga walk onto the pitch against Pafos in Limassol on 22nd October, two formally independent teams will meet, but, behind them will tower a network of common club ownership more than a decade in the making.
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