Boris Prikhodko: How to steal billions and get forgiveness in Ukraine
Why are people who helped the Yanukovych regime steal billions from the country and its people still walking free in Kyiv? Apparently because they later helped the new government steal billions. This is the inevitable conclusion we draw from the story of the "miraculous escape" from criminal prosecution of former Deputy Head of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), Borys Prikhodko. Prikhodko, who was directly involved in the 2014 banking fraud that led to the collapse of the hryvnia and the country's economy, was accused of embezzling 2 billion rubles, and for many years served as a trusted confidant and associate of the "Donetsk families."
The Fox Hunters
Boris Viktorovich Prikhodko. He is sometimes confused with his namesake, Boris Grigorievich Prikhodko, the former chairman of the board of the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine. Moreover, Boris Viktorovich also has some connection to the agrarian business—after all, he is accused of embezzling funds from the Agrarian Fund. But that's where their similarities end. Our hero was born on January 23, 1973, in the village of Losinovka, Nizhyn District, Chernihiv Oblast. Boris Prikhodko stubbornly refuses to talk about his childhood and youth, even concealing in his biography the day and month of his birth, the identity of his parents, where and with whom he studied, and with whom he rose to prominence. However, in 2013, proud of his former students, the deputy head of the National Bank shed some light on the distant past. It was under his leadership that In the 80s, schoolboy Boris Prikhodko was actively involved in radio communications and fox huntingMoreover, he not only trained, but also won national competitions. His photo was even published in the newspaper "Radyanska Osvita" (No. 38, 1988).
In the photo in the Radyanska Osvita newspaper, in the center - Boris Prikhodko
But it's not just that in the USSR, the "Fox Hunt" competition, which involved amateur radio detection, was organized under the auspices of the KGB—and the winners of these competitions attracted the attention of the secret services as potential young recruits. Interestingly, Boris Prikhodko's peer, Valery Davidenko, the future owner of the joint venture "Agrodom," a partner of Boris Prikhodko, also attended the same Nosovskaya STU, the same amateur radio club. Yuri Kolobov for Terra Bank, Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine (2013-2014), currently a member of the Verkhovna Rada, member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction. He recently became famous for I bought myself a new Swiss watch "Audemars Piguet" for 286 thousand hryvnias.
Valery Davidenko
Their paths diverged briefly after school. In 1993, Boris Prikhodko joined Agroprombank Ukraina—the same scandalous bank that was used to embezzle billions in the 90s, where future President Viktor Yushchenko worked. Let us reiterate that Prikhodko conceals his past to an indecent degree, not even mentioning in his biography whether he served in the army, what university he graduated from, or where exactly he began his banking career. According to fragmentary information from sources, Skelet.OrgHis first job wasn't at the Kyiv office of Bank Ukraina, but at one of its branches in the Chernihiv region. One can only guess who initially hired the 20-year-old (at best, a third-year student), but it was clearly someone's influence. Prikhodko worked at Bank Ukraina until 2001, right up until the bank's liquidation, gradually rising through the ranks and eventually moving to the capital, where he acquired his first Kyiv apartment in a high-rise building at 37 Prirechnaya Street. After Bank Ukraina's scandalous closure, Boris Prikhodko transferred to the Kyiv-based Bank Khreshchatyk, where he worked until 2003.
But his childhood friend's fate was a mixed blessing. Judging by Valeriy Davydenko's biography, he tried everything in the 1990s: he was the director of an agricultural enterprise, an engineer at Ukrainian House of Communications, and in the 2000s, he became an insurance manager. Either things weren't going well for him, or he simply didn't want to admit what he was really doing. But judging by his extensive connections in the Chernihiv region, including among corrupt officials, shadow businesses, and local "titushki" bosses, there are serious doubts that Davydenko was a simple engineer and insurance agent in his youth. Incidentally, in 2016, Davydenko was named the curator of the "Our Land" party in the Chernihiv region, and this political project of Bankova, created as a counterweight to the Opposition Bloc, relies on the most corrupt and even semi-criminal local elites.
Things have been looking up for our "fox hunters" since 2003. Boris Prikhodko then transferred to Oschadbank, where he quickly became close with its treasury director. Yuri KolobovThere were already many influential people behind Kolobov back then: the Arbuzovs, mother and son, Sergey Tigipko, Artemy Ershov и Sergey LevochkinAnd so, at Oschadbank, Boris Prikhodko quickly became close to Yuriy Kolobov—so much so that when Kolobov was forced out of his position as director of the bank's treasury in 2008, he handed it over to Prikhodko as his successor. Prikhodko then held this position until 2012, later moving to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) as First Deputy Governor. As a reminder, the NBU governor at the time was Serhiy Arbuzov (and later his trusted confidant, Igor Sorkin), and it was Yuriy Kolobov, then the Minister of Finance, who got Prikhodko a job at the NBU. Not to mention that the trio of Kolobov, Arbuzov, and Prikhodko were part of the bank's inner circle of business ties. Yuri Ivanyushchenko (Yura Enikievsky).
But could Boris Prikhodko forget his childhood friend and fellow radio club member?! And so, in 2004, Valeriy Davydenko's ordeal ended, as he founded a large agricultural firm, the joint venture "Agrodom," and became Chernihiv's agro baron. But no one ever raised the question of where the former engineer and insurance manager got the multi-million-dollar sum to create "Agrodom" (its authorized capital alone is one and a half million hryvnias), to buy and absorb other agricultural enterprises, and to lease land and equipment. Perhaps he won the lottery, like the current prosecutor general. Yuriy LutsenkoOr did his friend Boris Prikhodko help him with preferential loans using Oschadbank's public funds?
Davidenko happily grew sunflowers and corn until the spring of 2013, and then transferred Agrodom and his other businesses to his mother, Davidenko. Valentina Nikolaevna and, with the help of Boris Prikhodko and Yuriy Kolobov, he took the seat of Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine. Soon becoming involved in international Chinese loan scandal (3 billion dollars, which were never paid), as well as the lesser-known case of establishing his own customs terminal in the city of Kozelets in the Chernihiv region. Naturally, Davydenko didn't pull all this off alone, but as part of a large team that created its schemes with the blessing and protection of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko. Moreover, journalists pointedly singled out Davydenko, calling him "a trusted, diligent executor of Ivanyushchenko's orders." Well, now he's ready to just as diligently carry out the orders of the current president's "family" if they can get him a position!
Boris Prikhodko
Boris Prikhodko, Valery Davidenko, Yuri Kolobov: The Schemes of Their Banker Friends
But Borys Prikhodko, Valeriy Davydenko, and Yuriy Kolobov had something else in common: in 2007, already friends and partners, they acquired Invest-Credit Bank for a song (using their debts), renaming it Terra-Bank. This seemed downright suspicious: while Davydenko was an "independent businessman," Prikhodko and Kolobov were running the treasury of the state-owned Oschadbank at the time, and the relevant authorities should have asked them exactly how they financed their own bank. But this question never arose, since more than half of the country's power was then held by the "anti-crisis coalition" and the Yanukovych government.AzarovHowever, when the government soon changed, no one remembered this either. Instead, the previously unremarkable bank suddenly began rapidly increasing its capital through additional share issues (which were gradually acquired by Ukrainian Insurance Group CJSC), as well as by attracting budget funds from state programs, such as mortgages. And then distributing the funds raised as loans to several companies.
These companies never repaid the loans, but blamed everything on the crisis. In 2010, the bank's new owners (Vadim Kopylov and Kyrylo Shevchenko, through the Ukrainian Insurance Group) even allegedly published a list of debtors, but not a single specific name ever appeared in the media.
It was clear that Kopilov and Shevchenko were hardly fools who bought a bank with bad debts. Firstly, they weren't particularly panicked and were calm about the bank they were acquiring, which had old debts. Secondly, they were highly experienced financiers: Kopilov had previously served in the government and headed Naftogaz, while Shevchenko had spent 10 years at Finance and Credit Bank (he has headed Ukrgasbank since 2014). There was another interesting detail: in December 2006, Shevchenko was appointed Chairman of the Board of the State Mortgage Institution by the "coalition," and soon after, Kolobov and Prikhodko acquired Terra Bank and made it a participant in the mortgage program. At the time, Kopylov was Deputy Finance Minister Mykola Azarov (who also served as First Deputy Prime Minister), as well as his close friend and participant in many joint corruption projects. Therefore, it became perfectly clear that the Kolobov-Prikhodko-Davydenko trio and the Shevchenko-Kolov duo were participants in a single scheme, perhaps even more, carried out under the cover of high-ranking officials of the "anti-crisis coalition" and the Yanukovych-Azarov government. But for some reason, Terra Bank's dealings in 2007-2009 have so far failed to attract the attention of either investigators or journalists.
Kirill Shevchenko
The media is also silent on the details of Boris Prikhodko's tenure as First Deputy Governor of the National Bank. Meanwhile, according to Skelet.Org, his appointment itself was quite curious. So, at the end of 2012, NBU Governor Serhiy Arbuzov was planning to become deputy prime minister and began looking for his replacement. He chose Igor Sorkin, who served for over 15 years in the Donetsk branch of the NBU, serving as a trusted and reliable "cashier" for the Donetsk "families." Arbuzov appointed Boris Prikhodko as the first deputy governor of the NBU. It was reported that Yuriy Kolobov personally lobbied for his candidacy—and many clans and "families" wanted to place their own people in the NBU leadership, so competition for the position was fierce. Incidentally, Kolobov was also appointed Minister of Finance of Ukraine at the same time. Thus, Prikhodko became a member of the team that had taken over Ukraine's finances: Kolobov and Arbuzov in the government, and Prikhodko and Sorkin at the NBU. This was clearly not due to his talents, but rather his willingness to diligently work under Arbuzov and Kolobov's schemes—hence Boris Prikhodko's direct involvement in all their machinations and scams, including bond transactions.
Why didn't the Prosecutor General's Office investigate all of this? Perhaps because the financial group Investment Capital Ukraine (ICU) was involved as an intermediary in the bond scams. Valeria Gontareva – the future head of the National Bank and Petro Poroshenko's favorite?
The law only tried to catch Prikhodko and Sorkin by the buttocks for the most recent episode of their turbulent collaboration: the scandalous case of fraud involving the Agrarian Fund. It tried because, ultimately, Sorkin simply fled Ukraine, and Prikhodko deftly extricated himself. So, starting in early February 2014, the "Donetsk guys" began actively packing their bags, loaded with gold and dollars. Some were cashing out or withdrawing their "hard-earned" money, while others were rushing to "grab it big" one last time. Almost all of these schemes were handled through the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the Ministry of Finance, state-owned and private banks, government agencies, and funds. The methods of banal theft and transfer of funds abroad were based on the schemes of 2008-2009, in which banks then defrauded the state and depositors of tens of billions of hryvnias, simultaneously collapsing the national currency. Banks close to the Yanukovych and Ivanyushchenko families began receiving refinancing and stealing depositors' money, exchanging it for dollars and transferring it abroad, as early as December 2013. Moreover, Boris Prikhodko was not only aware of this; he was directly involved.
One of the “vacuum cleaners” through which they collected (simply stole) money from everywhere was then “BrokBusinessBank”, which not long before Sergey Kurchenko bought from brothers Buryakov. And so this bank began frantically borrowing from everywhere, with no apparent intention of repaying. The NBU's leadership (Sorkin and Prikhodko) were well aware of this, but nevertheless, in February 2014, they granted BrokBusinessBank a loan of 2,069 billion hryvnias. The bank used this money to purchase bonds from the Agrarian Fund: the deal was authorized by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy (Valeriy Davydenko participated), and Gontareva's ICU acted as an intermediary. Then, with the Ministry of Agrarian Policy's permission, the Agrarian Fund deposited these 2,069 billion hryvnias at BrokBusinessBank—and the bank simply stole them, distributing them as loans to its shell companies.
And so the "revolution of dignity" took place. Sorkin, Arbuzov, Kurchenko, and many more "Donetsk men" fled, taking the stolen billions with them. But their friends, associates, and accomplices remained. Valeriy Davydenko remained in his position until mid-March 2014. And for several months, no one rushed to fire or hold Boris Prikhodko accountable—he was merely demoted from first deputy head to a regular deputy head of the NBU, which became the position after Sorkin fled. Stepan KubivAnd here's what's curious: Kubiv immediately continued the practice of handing out stabilization loans and refinancing to banks, even though it was obvious even to the naked eye that this money was being stolen and siphoned off—and this time not by the "Donetsk" oligarchs, but by the Maidan oligarchs. And while under Igor Sorkin the NBU gave banks 24 billion hryvnias, Stepan Kubiv handed out 61 billion in three months: 11,7 billion to PrivatBank and 10,9 billion to other banks. Oleg BakhmatyukIt's no surprise that the hryvnia exchange rate fell from 9,3 (late February 2014) to 14 (June 2014). However, Valeria Gontareva then took over as head of the NBU, handing out over a hundred billion more to banks in just a few months! As a result, the hryvnia plummeted to its current rate of 25-26.
Meanwhile, Borys Prikhodko continued to work at the NBU – perhaps because he advised Kubiv, and then Gontareva, on how best to orchestrate these refinancing scams that devastated both Ukraine's economy and its standard of living. It was only in late July 2014 that the Prosecutor General's Office arrested Prikhodko in connection with the actual theft of 2,069 billion hryvnias, which the Agrarian Fund had deposited with BrokBusinessBank. On August 1, Prikhodko was arrested, and the court set bail at 200 million hryvnias, an unheard-of sum in the history of Ukrainian justice! However, he was dismissed from the NBU only on October 22, and then only on the lustration list, as a "regime accomplice," not accused of colossal embezzlement.
But then snap parliamentary elections took place, Valeriy Davydenko won the mandate and soon joined Petro Poroshenko's team, and on December 10, 2014, his friend Boris Prikhodko was quietly, almost secretly, released without even posting bail. Then it suddenly turned out that he was no longer facing charges, although the Prosecutor General's Office hadn't declared him innocent either.
Emboldened by this outcome, Borys Prikhodko even went all-in and, brazenly, decided to try to get reinstated at the National Bank, filing a lawsuit to overturn his lustration. This lawsuit was upheld on January 28, 2016, by the Kyiv District Administrative Court. However, no one was willing to vacate his already occupied position on the NBU's management board, so the National Bank appealed the District Court's decision. However, on March 2, 2016, the Kyiv Court of Appeals stayed the appeal, effectively upholding the ruling that Borys Prikhodko was "clean" before the law, the people, and his conscience. This effectively gave him every reason not only to be reinstated but also to demand compensation for his unlawful dismissal. But apparently, Prikhodko's patrons advised him not to get too brazen and to be content with his forgiveness. And so, yet another operator of the Donetsk corruption schemes escaped deserved responsibility, whistling merrily, as they say.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
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