Yet another PrivatBank’s top manager is facing justice for allegedly laundering money from the bank before its 2016 nationalization. The High Anti-Corruption Court set bail for Liudmyla Shmalchenko, former deputy chair of PrivatBank, at Hr 50 million ($1.7 million) on March 26.
Shmalchenko is accused of helping her colleagues steal $315 million from the bank. This amount is just a portion of the $5.5 billion the former owners and their accomplices allegedly laundered from PrivatBank, according to the investigators.
Shmalchenko is among the three former PrivatBank’s managers charged including Oleksandr Dubilet, former CEO of PrivatBank, and Nadiya Konopkina, former head of the department for support of interbank treasury operations.
On March 25, the High Anti-Corruption Court set bail for Konopkina at Hr 2.7 million ($96,400).
Read more: PrivatBank’s former top managers charged with embezzlement. Is Kolomoisky next?
Five former PrivatBank’s top managers have now been charged with laundering various sums from the bank, including first deputy CEO Volodymyr Yatsenko and head of the financial management department Olena Bychikhina. The two along with Dubilet are accused of stealing Hr 136 million (about $5 million).
Dubilet is a suspect in both investigations.
The scheme
The $315 million in question went missing from PrvatBank’s accounts the day before the bank’s nationalization in 2016, according to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU).
The detectives found out that on Dec. 16 in 2016 Dubilet instructed his subordinates to transfer $315 million from PrivatBank’s account in an unnamed European bank to two agricultural companies.
To cover up the embezzlement, the top management faked the documents to make it look like the bank loaned $315 million to a connected offshore company, Claresholm Marketing Ltd., according to the investigators.
This is the second case in which investigators suspect the former bank’s top managers of embezzling the depositors’ money right before PrivatBank’s nationalization.
Another case concerns Hr 136 million that ended up in the account of an insurance company, related to the bank’s top-managers. This sum was stolen on the very same day on Dec. 16.
Yatsenko, Dubilet and Bychikhina transferred Hr 136 million from PrivatBank to Ingosstrakh, which Yatsenko and Dubilet control through other shareholders. Bychikhina simultaneously worked at PrivatBank and Ingosstrakh at the time of the transfer.
According to the NABU, the trio made two fraudulent transfers to the insurance company’s accounts disguised as deposit payments.
To make it look legitimate, they backdated the payment documents. These documents stated that Privatbank owed Ingosstrakh Hr 136 million as “indexed commission for a change in the hryvnia-dollar rate.” The bank’s original deposit contract with Ingosstrakh doesn’t include it.
Cover up
During the bail hearing on March 26, the prosecutors read out the messages Konopkina and Shmalchenko exchanged on WhatsApp.
In a group chat named “Rescue stars,” the two along with a few other PrivatBank’s former employees discussed how to destroy the evidence of the crime, cover it up and influence a witness so he doesn’t reveal their scheme to law enforcement.
In another chat called “Total Recall,” Yatsenko and Shmalchenko discussed how to persuade Konopkina to flee the country so that investigators don’t get to her. Yatsenko suggested she should relocate to Vienna, Austria.
On Feb. 22, Yatsenko himself was trying to hide from prosecution in Vienna. He was pulled from a plane chartered by oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky minutes before he had a chance to escape over the border.
