He wasn’t an invited speaker, and none of the attendees knew that he would show. But once oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky arrived for lunch at the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference on Sept. 13, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari might as well have canceled his lecture, scheduled an hour later.
Suddenly, much of the attention — particularly from the Ukrainian press — was on the 55-year-old oligarch, who returned to Ukraine in May following the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky. That brought to an end two years of self-imposed exile.
Kolomoisky is Zelensky’s former business partner. The comedic actor-turned-president’s shows were broadcast on Kolomoisky’s 1+1 television channel, leading many to conclude he would continue to influence Zelensky as president.
Just days before YES, the oligarch met with Zelensky and his administration, increasing speculation about their ties.
So when Kolomoisky — known for his gregarious personality and relative accessibility to the press — met with journalists at an impromptu press conference at Kyiv’s Mystetsky Arsenal venue, the resulting conversation was long, detailed, and at times tangential.
The biggest takeaway was that, according to Kolomoisky, he and Zelensky did not discuss PrivatBank — Ukraine’s largest financial institution, which formerly belonged to Kolomoisky and his business partner. It was nationalized in 2016 after an investigation found a $5.5-billion hole in its ledgers.
Many have raised concerns that Kolomoisky could regain control of the bank under Zelensky.
Speaking to a jostling crowd of journalists, Kolomoisky suggested he was ready to settle the PrivatBank issue.
“We have declared that we don’t want cataclysms, and simply want a legal assessment and after that an amicable settlement, an exit from this situation,” he said. “We don’t need the bank at any price.”
Kolomoisky said he had $2 billion in PrivatBank, which he would like to exchange for shares in the bank.
Today, he sees a “window of opportunity,” the oligarch said.
At the same time, he could not resist casting aspersions on the government’s claims against the bank. Asked about the investigation by Kroll, the financial detective agency which identified fraudulent practices and undercapitalization in the bank, Kolomoisky called the investigation’s conclusions into question.
“Who is it?” he asked, suggesting Kroll was a “private company that for money would write what its client wants.”
Ties to Zelensky
Earlier at YES, Zelensky told journalists that he and Kolomisky had discussed how “everyone must follow the rules, there will be no monopolies — for everyone, including Mr. Kolomoisky.” The president also said he wanted Kolomoisky to help with lowering the prices for utilities, a major concern for wide swaths of the Ukrainian population. None of these positions could be considered pro-Kolomoisky.
Kolomoisky also downplayed his influence on the president. He said this was his first meeting with Zelensky in four months.
Asked about Zelensky’s comments on monopolies, Kolomoisky was concise: “We never had a monopoly.” Many market observers and, at times, Ukraine’s Anti-Monopoly Committee have disagreed with that assessment.
Asked whether he thought he or oligarch Victor Pinchuk, the organizer and sponsor of YES, had more influence on the president, Kolomoisky said he thought Zelensky had the most influence on Zelensky.
Not an oligarch?
When Maksym Kamenev, a journalist for the Hromadske television channel, asked Kolomoisky what unofficial rules Zelensky had set for oligarchs and how they compared to those under Poroshenko, Kolomoisky denied that there are oligarchs in Ukraine.
After Kamenev suggested Kolomoisky was an oligarch, he pushed back.
“How am I an oligarch?!” the oligarch asked, and then denied having power or influence on the government in Ukraine — standard features of oligarchs.
However, during the 2019 presidential election, Kolomoisky’s 1+1 TV channel gave near-constant airtime to then-candidate Zelensky, likely boosting his profile in the runup to the election.
Kolomoisky also denied that Ihor Palytsia, a close associate who served as Odesa Oblast governor and was a lawmaker until recently, was “his lawmaker.” Kolomoisky described Palytsia as a friend and his business partner “when he is not a lawmaker.”
“Recently, he has always been a lawmaker, so he can’t do business,” Kolomoisky said.
Palytsia was appointed Odesa Oblast governor in 2014, when Kolomoisky was allied with former President Petro Poroshenko and serving as governor Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. He was sacked after Kolomoisky fell out with Poroshenko and was fired as governor.
Kolomoisky’s feud with Poroshenko would eventually lead him to leave Ukraine and take up residence in Switzerland and Israel.
Ukraine International Airlines
In his comments to journalists, Kolomoisky also finally stated his share of Ukraine International Airlines, the country’s national carrier. Kolomoisky said he owns 25 percent of the company’s shares, the Liga news site reported from YES.
Kolomoisky’s ownership of the airline has long been widely known. However, his exact share has never been public. Earlier this year, Kolomoisky declined to state his share in a brief telephone interview with the Kyiv Post.
Giuliani
In July, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed that two Soviet-born American businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Furman, had set up meetings for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the personal lawyer of U.S. President Donald Trump, with several Ukrainian officials. The two businessmen also attempted to push their own plan to sell American liquid natural gas to Ukraine.
In an attempt to make contact with President Zelensky, Furman and Parnas also met with Kolomoisky but were rebuffed, according to the OCCRP.
At YES, Kolomoisky said he has never spoken to Giuliani. He termed Furman and Parnas’ belief that he could arrange a meeting with Zelensky “a misunderstanding,” using the English word.
“They appealed to the wrong address,” Kolomoisky told the Kyiv Post.
Giuliani has been pushing Ukraine to investigate contrived corruption accusations against former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 American presidential election on the side of Hillary Clinton. Multiple anti-corruption experts and Ukraine analysts have called these accusations weak or outright false.
