The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) on Feb. 22 arrested Volodymyr Yatsenko, a former deputy CEO of PrivatBank, and charged him with embezzlement.
PrivatBank, Ukraine’s biggest bank, was nationalized in 2016 when it was found to have an over $5.5 billion hole in its ledger, allegedly moved out by its former owners and oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov via fraudulent schemes. Ukrainian taxpayers paid for the bailout of the bank. Kolomoisky denies the accusations of wrongdoing.
Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova initially asked an anti-corruption prosecutor to sign the charges, law enforcement sources told the Kyiv Post. For unknown reasons, the prosecutor refused.
Then Venediktova signed the charges herself. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The arrest of Yatsenko was unusual and indicated that law enforcement officers might be leaking information to PrivatBank’s former officials to help them avoid arrest.
The charges against Yatsenko were signed at about 9 a.m. and weren’t publicly announced. About an hour later, at 10 a.m., Yatsenko flew out of Dnipro Airport on a private plane belonging to Kolomoisky’s company, heading for Vienna.
His swift departure indicated that he was tipped off about the charges. Venediktova said the leak would be investigated.
In a unique move, the NABU asked the State Aviation Service to land the plane at Kyiv Boryspil Airport. The pilot had to turn back and land in Kyiv. Yatsenko was arrested immediately.
The NABU has also drafted charges for other top executives of PrivatBank, including its former CEO Oleksandr Dubilet, the sources said.
The Prosecutor General’s Office is waiting for the results of an additional forensic assessment in order to authorize the charges, according to the sources. The bank’s former owners Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov aren’t among those about to be charged.
Meanwhile, Kolomoisky has been under investigation in the U.S. in a money laundering case. He denies the accusations.
While Kolomoisky and his associates haven’t been officially charged in the U.S. yet, in 2020 the U.S. Justice Department filed two civil forfeiture complaints that could allow it to seize $70 million worth of real estate. In the complaints, the U.S. says Kolomoisky, Bogolyubov and their American associates Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber engaged in fraud and money laundering.
In a separate civil case, the nationalized PrivatBank filed a $1.9 billion lawsuit against Kolomoisky in the U.K. in 2017. The High Court ruled that the case has no British jurisdiction in 2018 but the Court of Appeals overturned that decision in 2019.
The U.K. Supreme Court on Feb. 1 ordered Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov to pay PrivatBank’s legal fees to the tune of 1 million pounds.
PrivatBank is also clashing against Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov in Switzerland, Cyprus and Israel.
