Yevhen Metzger, the chairman of state-owned Ukreximbank who had been suspected without pay for attacking journalists, submitted his resignation on Oct. 11.
“This is a logical step,” Metzger explained on his Facebook page, “only possible in a situation where you need to avert negative consequences for the bank.”
The nomination committee of the bank’s supervisory board accepted the resignation letter and recommended for the board to fire him.
Metzger served as the chairman of the board since March 2020. He held various jobs at the bank from May 2006 until May 2015.
He got himself in trouble on Oct. 4, while being interviewed on camera in his office by journalists of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty investigative program Schemes. When journalists asked him a question about a suspicious loan, Metzger ordered his security to forcibly seize their cameras and delete the recorded video from their memory drives. The journalists were then detained and threatened in his office for about an hour.
According to the Schemes journalists, the cause of the conflict was a $60 million loan issued by the state-owned Ukreximbank to the companies of a businessman whose company operates in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, the illegitimate “government” set up in Donetsk Oblast by Russian-sponsored militants. The businessman pays taxes to the occupation authorities.
The loan was issued using the SkyMall shopping center in Kyiv as collateral, despite the fact that the mall has been bogged down with legal problems for a long time.
Ukreximbank initially denied the journalists’ accusation and accused them of trying to access confidential client information.
On Oct. 5, the Schemes journalists managed to restore and air their video recordings of the attack, after which Metzger made a public apology and stepped down from duties for the duration of the ensuing investigation.
He now faces assault charges and has been placed under nighttime house arrest, along with Ukreximbank’s information policy director, Volodymyr Pikalov.
