High-flying bank tycoon now fugitive.
Deep-sea diving buff Igor Gilenko was once among Ukraine’s elite, meeting with the likes of President Victor Yushchenko and Foreign Minister Petro Poroshenko.
In 2008, Focus and Korrespondent magazines both ranked Gilenko as one of Ukraine’s richest persons with an estimated net worth of roughly $600 million.
Now the 43-year old Gilenko is just another disgraced banker, a fugitive on the run after prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for him on Oct. 9. He is suspected of large-scale embezzlement – up to $1 billion of other people’s money – from his former Nadra Bank.
The rise and fall of Nadra, which Gilenko headed from 1997 until it collapsed into government receivership on Feb. 10, is fast becoming one of the biggest bank and corruption scandals in Ukraine’s history. Gilenko was sacked as president and board chairman the next day, on Feb. 11.
Gilenko once enjoyed a high-flyer lifestyle, jetting between Ukraine and Australia, where he co-owned a leading Internet company.
In February 2003, Gilenko co-founded Australian telecommunications provider DoDo, which grew to become the country’s fourth largest provider of broadband Internet with over 300,000 customers. In 2005, Australia’s Business Review Weekly ranked Gilenko and DoDo co-founder Larry Kestelman as their country’s 8th richest Australians under 40 with an estimated worth of $87 million.
The Age, an Australian daily, that year said Gilenko had applied for and was denied Australian citizenship. The article said Gilenko and his wife own residential real estate in Melbourne.
His wealth allowed him to indulge in his passions, including scuba diving in tropical paradises. Before he went into hiding, he chronicled his travels and hobbies on such social networking websites as www.odnoklasniki.ru and vkontakte.ru. Since the Oct. 9 arrest warrant became public, someone — perhaps Gilenko himself – began deleting personal photographs from scuba-diving trips and links to friends.
Born and educated as an engineer in Moscow, the Russian citizen spent the early 1990s jumping from various ventures. He got his first banking experience in Russia. But it was in Ukraine, where he served as president and chairman of Nadra, that his banking career took off and eventually crashed.
Late last year, the Nadra banking operation managed by Gilenko, proved to be nothing more than a house of cards. Most bankers say they haven’t seen Gilenko since about the time of his Feb. 11 dismissal. He disappeared soon after a large share of the almost $1 billion in National Bank of Ukraine assistance went unaccounted for.
Gilenko still has his defenders who proclaim his innocence. “I doubt he is guilty of the crimes he is accused of,” said Kyrylo Deryahin, who worked with Gilenko. “I know him as an honest, sociable and well-educated person, who could always quickly find a well-grounded answer to any question.”
Andrey Chistyakov, a diving coach, running a Moscow-based diving school, got to know Gilenko and former Nadra Bank vice president Oksana Kirienko.
Chistyakov told the Kyiv Post he does not know Gilenko’s whereabouts. But he added: “If he calls, I’ll pass on that you want to get in touch with him.”
