Buster's 4.5M Ruble Tax Debt

While millions of Russians dutifully pay taxes on their salaries, top streamers buy Ferraris for 55 million and apartments for 105 million, yet manage to owe the state. Vyacheslav "Buster" Leontiev is one of the brightest examples of how the financial kitchen of Russian millionaire bloggers works. We figure out where the debt came from and how the top Russian Twitch streamers live.

Who is Buster and where do his millions come from?

Vyacheslav Leontiev, known by the nicknames Buster and "Colonel Boosterenko," was born on February 25, 1997, in Moscow. In his school years, he was fond of football, often fought with classmates, and was an mediocre student. His mother sent him to a cadet corps, but Slava only stayed there for a couple of years.

The path to fame began in 2015 with registration on Twitch, but he quickly became disillusioned with the platform then. Real success came in 2019, when Buster returned and started streaming CS:GO and Fortnite. By spring 2020, each of his broadcasts gathered 10 thousand viewers, and the COVID-19 pandemic did its job – young people, locked at home, flocked to streaming platforms.

Current figures: Buster's Twitch channel has 4.6 million subscribers. In summer 2021, he made it to Forbes' "30 under 30" ranking in the "New Media" category. In 2025, he set a record for online viewership in the CIS – 758,000 viewers on a single broadcast.

But not by streams alone. Buster is an entrepreneur:

Rave by Buster computer club chain (first opened in Moscow in 2024, then five more)
He is the founder of four companies: "Chen Vkusno," "Ppengeimer," "UK Rave," and "Lunasi"
Their total annual revenue is about 96.6 million rubles

Tax debt of 4.5 million: what is known

In May 2025, Telegram channels Mash and SHOT reported that Buster owed the Federal Tax Service about 4.5 million rubles.

According to sources, the debtor to the tax authorities is, presumably, the company "Lunasi" – the most profitable of the streamer's four enterprises. The debt amount is 4,582,000 rubles.

It is noteworthy that the news of the debt came amid Buster's display of his luxurious life. According to media reports, in the last couple of years, he acquired:

An apartment in Moscow for 105 million rubles
A Ferrari SF90 Spider for 55 million rubles
An Audi R8 for 16 million rubles and a Mercedes-AMG G for 28 million
He gave his mother a BMW X3 and his grandmother a Lamborghini

At the same time, as the investigation authors note, the real estate and cars were registered not in Buster's name, but in the names of other people.

Buster himself summarized the results of 2025 in his Telegram channel, and point №1 on his list of achievements reads: "Earned the most money this year." This is followed by "fulfilled a childhood dream - bought a Ferrari."

How top streamers in Russia live: luxury and its downside

The situation with Buster is not an isolated case. It reveals a systemic problem: many top bloggers live lavishly, but they face difficulties with the tax authorities.

Financial ceilings of Russian-speaking Twitch
Streamers' incomes come from several sources:

Direct donations from viewers
Paid subscriptions (from $5 to $25 per month for some authors)
Advertising integrations
Own business

Buster himself earned about one million dollars from advertising contracts in his first two years of streaming. For comparison: streamer Vladimir bratishkinoff Semenyuk showed an income from Twitch of 119 thousand dollars (about 12 million rubles) over three years – but he cannot withdraw this amount due to sanction restrictions.

Tax precedents among bloggers
Buster is not the first and not the last. Over several years, high-profile tax scandals involving top bloggers have erupted in Russia.

Lerchek (Valeria Chekalina) and her husband Artyom are the most resonant case. In their mansion, law enforcement found a fleet of luxury cars worth 145 million rubles, gold bars, and an apartment in Moscow worth about a billion. The damage to the state from their tax fraud was estimated at more than 300 million rubles. The spouses were placed under a travel ban.

Alexandra Mitroshina found herself in a similar situation – she was also accused of tax evasion amounting to many millions of rubles.

Gusein Gasanov is another example: in 2025, the Federal Tax Service sued him for tax evasion, his accounts were frozen, and his property seized. He later managed to repay the debt – an amount of more than 300 million rubles.

Why streamers have tax problems

Lawyers and entrepreneurs admit: blogging activity itself does not have an official status. It is unclear where to classify it – is it a trade, advertising, or a service industry? This is what those who "create content" take advantage of.

Experts identify several reasons:

Multi-channel income: streamers receive money from dozens of sources – donations, subscriptions, advertising, crowdfunding, merchandise. All of this can easily be "lost" in reporting.
Legal illiteracy: the Union of Bloggers under the State Duma admitted that many channel authors simply might not know tax legislation.
Optimization schemes: registering property in the name of third parties (as in Buster's case), using individual entrepreneurs with a simplified tax system when incomes clearly exceed the limits.
"Gift" status for donations: for a long time, donations were considered gifts that are not taxed within certain limits. Today, this practice is in question – proposals to introduce a donation tax for streamers are already being discussed in the State Duma.