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Natus Vincere recently lost to a relatively unknown Akuma at EPIC League CIS 2021, an RMR event. Akuma considered an underdog team, swept the world's second-best team with a 2-0 final score to advance to the upper bracket of the Regional Major Ranking (RMR) event.
Things took a turn for the worse when NA'VI coach 'B1ad3' and several other professional players accused AKUMA of cheating in the RMR event. Later, ESIC claimed to have discovered evidence of suspicious betting activity involving Oleksandr Shyshko, the former CEO of Project X, the team under which AKUMA competed.
AKUMA is embroiled in a new controversy almost a month later, with two of its players leaving the team in the midst of the ongoing StarLadder CIS RMR event. Following a 2-0 loss to NA'VI, AKUMA's 'J3kie' and 'Sensei' have left the team before the event's conclusion.
Evgeniyy ‘j3kie' Sergachev announced on VK.com, the popular regional social networking site, that he was a free agent looking for a potential new team, while Dmitriy ‘SENSEi' Shvorak removed Akuma from his about sections on social sites, indicating that he, too, is now a free agent.
The decision to leave the event before the playoffs appear highly suspicious, as it fuels speculation that there is something seriously wrong with Akuma. Perhaps the accusations were true, which is why the players chose to leave. We will have to wait for ESIC to provide us with additional evidence once their ongoing investigations into the cheating allegations are completed. StarLadder and Akuma have yet to comment on the departure of their players mid-event.