Kyiv-based attorney Arsen Marinushkin says that PrivatBank, with 20 percent of the nation's banking assets and owned by billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, has cancelled his bank account after he warned about the bank’s recently launched deposit scheme.
In a post titled “PrivatBank: how to legally take your deposit” on his personal website, Marinushkin compares the scheme to that of insolvent Bank Mikhailovsky, which last year set up a fraudulent service that offered clients extremely high interest rates – 25 percent per year – on their deposits.
Marinushkin, who represented clients seeking their money back in the Mikhailovsky case, stated that PrivatBank was now offering similarly high interest rates for depositors.
However, the deposits are actually invested into bank-run service called Profitable Investments. Marinushkin warned that the money is not government insured, only privately insured, through Ingosstrakh, a PrivatBank-owned company which holds accounts with the bank.
“The ad for the deposit scheme has PrivatBank written on it, but in reality that’s not where your money is actually going,” Marinushkin said.
Days after Marinushkin published the article on Aug. 3, Privatbank terminated him as a client in accordance with the bank’s terms and conditions.
Kyiv Post is has contacted Privatbank and is seeking a response.
Marinushkin described the move as backlash against his article.
While the notice did not specify the exact reason for the termination, Marinushkin said he received a call from the bank in the days following, during which he was told he was an unconscientious client.
“They said, over the phone, that my actions are harming the reputation of the bank,” he told the Kyiv Post.
Marinushkin urged depositors to read the terms and conditions of the transaction carefully after the collapse of Mikhailovsky led to more than Hr 1 billion in uninsured losses.
The Kyiv Post reported on July 4 that Hr 2 billion in deposits were invested into the Privatbank deposit scheme at the time of publication.
In the case of Bank Mikhailovsky, deposits, instead of sitting in an account, were invested in a shell company called Investment Calculation Center and only privately insured by another shell company Forte, both of which were linked to the bank’s founder Viktor Polishchuk.
