CyberGhost

CyberGhost is operated by CyberGhost S.R.L., headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, with the product itself dating to 2011. It is included in this directory primarily because of its Romanian operations and historical brand recognition in the privacy-VPN category — but the ownership chain is the editorial story, and it is the reason the compliance score is held at 2/5. The chain runs as follows. In 2017 CyberGhost was acquired for €9.1M by **Kape Technologies plc**, an AIM-listed UK holding company that has since become the largest VPN consolidator in the consumer market. Kape's portfolio also includes **ExpressVPN, Private Internet Access (PIA), Zenmate, and the VPN review site VPN Mentor** — the last of which is a structural conflict of interest, since a holding company that owns multiple VPN services should arguably not also own the most-trafficked review/comparison site for that same category. Kape Technologies began life as **Crossrider**, an Israeli ad-tech and browser-extension business with a well-documented adware history; the rebranding to "Kape Technologies" was a deliberate distancing move. On **19 May 2023 Unikmind Holdings Limited** — an Isle of Man-registered vehicle controlled by Israeli businessman **Teddy Sagi** — secured ~98.5% of Kape's shares in a take-private deal valuing the company at approximately £1.25-1.51bn, and Kape **delisted from AIM on 31 May 2023**. Against that backdrop, the product-level signals look reasonable in isolation: an **independent Deloitte audit** confirmed no user-data storage; AES-256 encryption with kill-switch and DNS-leak protection; NextGen 10-Gbps servers across 100+ countries; 24+ supported platforms; 20+ UI languages; Bitcoin payment via BitPay; a 45-day money-back guarantee. Pricing on the 26-month plan reaches €1.75/month — among the cheapest in the category, which is itself a Kape-pricing pattern. None of those product strengths offset the structural concerns of the ownership chain for a directory whose value proposition is sovereignty + auditable corporate trust. CyberGhost is therefore listed at **2/5 as a warning rather than a recommendation** — with the full Crossrider-Kape-Unikmind-Sagi history surfaced in the rationale, which is exactly the kind of editorial scoop no other EU directory currently makes visible. EU buyers wanting a clean Romanian VPN should look outside the Kape stable; sovereignty buyers should prefer Mullvad, OVPN, ProtonVPN, IVPN or AirVPN.