‘Yango Play’: An Emirati Platform in Zionist Hands for Brainwashing and Data Theft

Seemingly out of nowhere, a mysterious platform called “Yango Play” burst onto the scene, swiftly rising to become one of the most prominent streaming and media hubs in the Middle East, drawing in millions with its mix of licensed and original films and series, along with music and games.

While the platform presents itself as “Arab” with its headquarters in Dubai, a deeper investigation reveals clear links to the Israeli Occupation, particularly after the UAE has recently become host to numerous Israeli companies, including some with intelligence affiliations.

The real danger, as highlighted by reports and activists, lies in the platform’s collection of personal information and data from anyone registering to access its extensive, modern, and free content, raising serious concerns that this sensitive data could be funneled directly to the Israeli Occupation.

The Story of Yango Play

This platform began in Russia and, following a split, part of it moved to the UAE, where Israeli Occupation involvement gradually became apparent, including branches or management overseen by Israeli administrators.

The roots of the platform go back to 1997 with the creation of Yandex by Arkady Volozh, a Russian of Kazakh origin who also held Israeli citizenship as a Jewish Israeli based in Tel Aviv. Yandex rapidly grew into one of Russia’s largest and most powerful companies, building an all-in-one entertainment “super app” for films, series, music, and games, a rise that earned it the moniker “Russian Google.”

The platform provided a range of services to Russians similar to Google’s offerings, including search, maps, e-commerce, delivery, and taxi services.

The parent company, Yandex N.V., was a holding company registered in the Netherlands. It expanded successfully within Russia and internationally.

Since 2022, the company faced difficulties due to the Russia-Ukraine war and Western sanctions imposed on Russian companies, including Yandex and its subsidiaries such as Yango Play.

These challenges prompted a restructuring that split the company into multiple entities. The original company, which retained Russian assets, continued as Yandex in Russia, while the international assets formed two new companies.

The first, Nebius Group, headquartered in Amsterdam with a branch in the Israeli Occupation, is led by Volozh and specializes in AI technologies, cloud services, and AI infrastructure.

The second, Yango Group, acquired the Yango brand and its international services, including Yango Play, and is managed by Daniil Shuleyko, a former Israeli colleague of Volozh from Russian Yango.

After being forced to sell his holdings in the Yandex search engine and its taxi and delivery services in Russia to Kremlin-linked partners, the Israeli Volozh, together with former Yandex CEO Elena Bunina, established a new venture.

Nebius migrated to the Israeli Occupation as a Dutch-Israeli entity, with its main office in the Netherlands. The company now builds and leases data centers, some managed partially from Tel Aviv.

Nebius has seen rapid growth, with its shares rising 25.5 percent in August 2025, according to Standard & Poor’s Global Market Intelligence. The company reported total revenue of $117.5 million in 2024 and has promised investors projected annual revenue between $750 million and $1 billion by the end of 2025, according to The Globe and Mail on September 3, 2025.

What Is Its Connection to ‘Israel’?

On April 27, 2023, the Israeli Occupation economic magazine Globes published a report titled “What's the founder of ‘the Russian Google’ doing in Israel?” It stated that Arkady Volozh, founder of Yandex, is one of “Israel’s” most prominent figures in the startup sector, residing in the historic Neve Tzedek neighborhood of Tel Aviv, where he married in 2017.

The magazine described him as a Russian billionaire of Kazakh origin living discreetly in central “Israel,” with an estimated net worth of $1.1 billion. His company, valued at $8 billion, ranks as the fourth largest search engine globally and a competitor to Google, earning it the nickname “Russian Google.”

Globes reported that after the European Union imposed sanctions on the Russian billionaire in June 2023, accusing him of providing material or financial support to Russia, Volozh resigned as CEO and director of Yandex and relocated parts of his operations to “Israel” and other countries.

The move came as a shock to Volozh and the wider business community, as he insisted he had no ties to the Russian government and had not resided in Russia for almost ten years. Volozh argued that the EU had made a mistake but quickly announced that he would step down as CEO of Yandex and as a director of the company.

“Following the Russian invasion, a substantial part of Yandex’s management came to Israel, as well as a group of developers and technology people,” according to the magazine.

Volozh said at the time that this presented an opportunity for the Israeli Occupation, and he asked the Israeli government to assist in bringing in engineers from Russia and some from Ukraine. 

To further highlight the company’s ties to the Israeli Occupation, Globes published another report on May 14, 2025, confirming that Nebius Group is contributing to the construction of “Israel’s national supercomputer.”

The total project budget is 500 million shekels (approximately $150 million), including a 160 million shekel grant from the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA).

Globes noted that the IIA chose Nebius because it is a cloud security company owned by former top executives of Yandex, including founder Arkady Volozh, to build “Israel’s” supercomputer.

The report emphasized that the company is partially managed from the Israeli Occupation, with a team of Israeli executives who previously held leadership roles at Yandex.

Emirati or Israeli Branch?

The second company that emerged from the split of the Russian Yandex was Yango Group, which retained the Yango brand and its international services, including taxi and delivery services, and established a full media branch under the name Yango Play.

Yango Play is part of the Yango Group, which originated from the Russian Yandex conglomerate and later became an independent company headquartered in Dubai, UAE.

In February 2024, the group launched an Arabic platform from Dubai, Yango Play, which markets itself as a “comprehensive entertainment app,” producing original content, movies, and series. It aims to offer content similar to Saudi Arabia’s Shahid or Egypt’s Watch It, but from the UAE.

The company claims to be independent, with its main headquarters in Dubai. Its CEO, Daniil Shuleyko, previously served as CEO of logistics and e-commerce at Yandex before the split and was a colleague of Israeli Arkady Volozh.

Financial reports indicate that Yango Group maintains business activities in the Israeli Occupation, operating commercial services within the occupied territories, including Yango Taxi, Yango Deli, and others. The company also has Israeli-registered entities in the occupied territories, such as Yango Enterprise Israel Ltd.

Investigations by Cairo Time into Yango Play’s Facebook page found that about 50 people manage it, including 12 based in the Israeli Occupation, and that Yango Play changed its administrators after this exposure.

According to Cairo Time, the personal data requested from users suggests that the platform is not merely an entertainment service but a tool with specific objectives: building a comprehensive database of individuals in the Arab world, shaping opinions, influencing public discourse, and promoting a political or cultural agenda beyond the surface-level entertainment.

Cairo Time warned that although the platform presents itself as “Emirati” or “Arab” to gain trust, it has an external agenda serving political or cultural interests through its content, aiming to alter identities, sanitize the image of the Israeli Occupation, or pass messages that serve its agenda.

The platform’s ultimate goal appears to be gradually reshaping awareness by leveraging values such as religion, family, and belonging, while the revenue generated could directly support the enemy’s economy.

According to an investigative report by researcher Mahmoud Allam on Facebook, the company managing Yango Play is a shell company listed in the platform’s “User Guide” and appearing on the Play Store when the app is downloaded, named Funtech Loyalty Card Services L.L.C.

“This company is fictitious; there is no information about it, and it is unknown who founded it, its nationality, or who runs or funds it,” he said.

Allam warned that this fake Israeli Occupation company is effectively running the Emirati platform and, through its connection to Yango Play, has the official right to access your phone and personal data as soon as the app is installed.

He explained that the platform gains access to users’ search history, personal files and documents on the device, photos and videos, and other personal data.

According to Mahmoud Allam, this means that the editorial direction and marketing decisions of Yango Play are controlled by Israeli Occupation entities and actors who collect user data from the platform to shape opinions and influence Arab communities.

Through this personal information, they can build a complete database of users, including profiles, phone numbers, addresses, and social media opinions—similar to the database “Israel” developed for Palestinians in coordination with American companies to target individuals in Gaza and elsewhere.

“The real danger lies in the type of data this platform collects about its users. You might think you’re just logging in to watch a series or listen to a song, but in reality, it’s tracking your interests, your behavior, even your mood. On top of that, you’re granting it permission to access all the files on your device, and it’s very possible there’s a backdoor built into the app that gives them access to even more. Who knows?” Allam said.

The Israeli Occupation previously contracted major U.S. tech companies, such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, to store Palestinians’ data from their phones and social media, which the Israeli military could use to locate and target individuals allegedly linked to Hamas, as highlighted in a previous Al-Estiklal report.

The researcher warned that while Yango Play appears innocent and its management claims to be Arab, there are suspicions that it operates as one of the largest mind-manipulation and data-theft operations in the region, disguised under entertainment and music.

The Platform Denies the Claims

After some users began deleting the app and unfollowing it over fears of spying and data transfer to the Israeli Occupation, Yango Play issued an official statement on 5 September 2025, strongly denying the circulating claims online that it is managed from “Israel,” calling them “completely false, misleading, and baseless.”

The official spokesperson of Yango Play stated that the platform was established in the United Arab Emirates and is fully managed from its headquarters in Dubai, under the Yango Global Technology Group.

The statement added that all strategic, operational, and editorial decisions are made inside the UAE, not the Israeli Occupation.

Regarding the recent appearance of “Israel” in META’s page transparency tool for Yango Play, the management explained that this was the result of some external partners using virtual private networks (VPNs), which caused inaccurate geographic locations to appear.

The company confirmed that its parent group, Yango Group, had previously withdrawn from the Israeli market and no longer operates there, and that any activities using the Yango name in the Israeli Occupation have no connection to the group or the platform, nor to Arkady Volozh or Nebius.

However, the fact remains that the parent company Yandex provides a range of services in the Israeli Occupation under the Yango brand, including Yango Taxi (similar to Uber and Careem), Yango Delivery (food and goods delivery), and Yango Music (a music streaming service different from Yango Play).

Activists have noted that most of Yango Play’s admins are based in “Israel,” prompting them to mock the platform’s denial of any Israeli connection.

On 5 September, the site Cairo 24, known for its ties to Egyptian regime authorities, published a report confirming the platform’s connection to the Israeli Occupation but later removed it, possibly due to UAE pressure. However, the report was republished by the Nabd app.