The history of Ukrainian banking scams has seen all sorts of things. They've swindled, laundered, evaded, forged... But for an influential businessman, a banker close to the Yanukovych family, to sign documents disowning his legal wife in order to organize a notorious construction scam—the domestic financial community has never seen such a unique business decision.
"I don't have a wife. Who's going to judge me for that?"
from the treasury of Russian pop of the 90s
The name of Delta Bank owner Nikolai Lagun has been making headlines on news sites in recent weeks. It's difficult for the uninitiated to discern what's going on in his business empire from these headlines. On the one hand, media reports claim Delta is refusing to return deposits to corporate clients, while on the other, the bank suddenly found €95 million in August to purchase Universal Bank. Against the backdrop of persistent talk of the imminent bankruptcy of Lagun's brainchild, reinforced by the "strange sale" of part of its assets to Russia's Alfa Bank, this seems quite audacious. And after TSN reported that Delta continues to operate undisturbed in the so-called "DPR" and "LPR" territories despite the suspicious loyalty of terrorists, it wasn't the recent news of Nikolai Lagun's arrest that caused surprise, but its official denial.
However, similar nervous chaos is currently raging in all the banks that participated in the Family's schemes, but they have yet to receive official charges from the Prosecutor General's Office. So Delta, which during Yanukovych's reign distinguished itself by siphoning off tens of billions of hryvnias of Naftogaz debt, buying up four (!) banks, and unprecedentedly expanding its assets (when asked where Lagun suddenly got so much money, experienced people pointedly ask: where, for example, did Kurchenko get it?), has no reason to complain at all. And anyway, Mykola Lagun should sort things out with his family now, and then he'll get his comeuppance along with Viktor Fedorovich's Family.
The story of Lagun's home is more than interesting—though it's been going on since 2007, some very piquant details have only just emerged in the court proceedings. Back in the pre-crisis years of 2007, Lagun took out a $16.785 million loan from Ukrsotsbank. More precisely, the loan wasn't taken out by Nikolai Ivanovich himself, but by Travers-Bud LLC, a company he founded with a Russian partner. However, an individual, N.I. Lagun, acted as guarantor for the borrower, pledging his land plots in the village of Berezivka, Makariv district, Kyiv region, as collateral. It was on these plots that Travers-Bud promised to build the luxury cottage complex "Olympic Park," which was the basis for the Ukrsotsbank loan.
On paper, everything seemed respectable and proper – Lagun, after all, was a prominent figure in banking, the head of his own bank, which had made a good profit in consumer lending. And at Ukrsotsbank, where Mykola Ivanovich worked from 1998 to 2006, rising to the position of deputy chairman of the board, there was no reason to distrust his former employee. However, the real estate bubble collapsed, the dollar rose, and Olympic Park, predictably, was hit by a construction depression. Repayment of the loan, which expired on April 10, 2010, was out of the question – and the debt as of September 2012 (according to the ruling of the Permanent Arbitration Court at the Association of Ukrainian Banks) amounted to UAH 162,485,838.
Having lost hope of recouping the money lent to Travers, the bank at least attempted to collect collateral from the guarantor. And then it suddenly became clear that Mykola Lagun's marital status was crucial to repaying the mortgage. Last October, when Yanukovych seemed eternal and his friends untouchable, the Makarovsky District Court of Kyiv Oblast opened proceedings on a lawsuit filed by one Yulia Sergeyevna Chebotareva, demanding that UkrSocBank's mortgage agreements with Travers be declared invalid. The reasoning was plausible: Chebotareva has been Mr. Lagun's legal wife since April 2007, meaning that N.I. Lagun, an individual, could only sign all subsequent mortgage agreements secured by his personal property with his wife's consent. The wife herself, as indicated in her statement, learned of her husband's antics only in the summer of 2013, when her husband received a decision from the same Makarovsky Court to collect the collateral under the contracts.
This touching scene from the series "The wife returns from a business trip..." would have been laughable, if the version presented by Lagun's wife hadn't directly implied that her husband had committed a criminal offense. The catch is that in June 2007, February 2008, and September 2008, Nikolai Ivanovich, while negotiating the mortgage, didn't simply conceal his marital status. The perfectly married Mr. Lagun also gave his attorney, Elena Afanasyeva, a power of attorney authorizing her to file statements declaring that he was neither in a registered marriage nor even a common-law relationship—and that he was not living under the same roof with anyone.
Overall, the situation appears more than transparent, but the presumption of innocence for respected individuals forces us to put forward several versions of what happened:
1. Yulia Chebotareva, a former MP from Kuchma's "For United Ukraine" bloc, a long-time top manager and close associate of Viktor Pinchuk, turned out to be a naive and gullible fool, whom even her own husband sold out at the first opportunity for a rather favorable price.
2. Lagun, when he signed the documents, didn't know he was married. Perhaps he'd given the wrong power of attorney to someone in a rush, and only realized the truth seven years later—when an old acquaintance of Chebotarev's filed a complaint with the Makarovsky Court.
3. Nikolai Ivanovich is simply embarrassed by the possibility of being suspected of being legally married or even cohabiting with a woman. Such is the brutal "Blue Lagoon" of the lives of Kyiv bankers.
4. The Makarovsky Court of Kyiv accidentally uncovered a stash belonging to Mr. Lagun, which he was trying to hide from his stern wife, who would confiscate the family budget. It's doubly offensive—the stash ends up being confiscated, and now he feels terribly embarrassed in front of his wife.
5. And finally, the creditors' version: Chebotareva, during her seven-year happy marriage, could not have failed to learn about the mortgage affair (even if she was unaware of Laguna's "vow of celibacy" initially). This means there was a conspiracy—one aimed at avoiding liability to the bank and subsequently challenging the agreement in court.
However, be that as it may, and no matter how the defendants now try to explain the vicissitudes of their fate, the fact remains: with her court filing, Chebotareva accused one of the country's most influential bankers of document forgery, fraud, and gross immorality (after all, issuing a "blank power of attorney" is not like removing a ring from your finger when going to the sauna). And while Ukrainian businesses rarely worry about morality, the first two actions will now be handled by law enforcement – on September 12, the Pechersk Court of Kyiv overturned the ruling of Vladislav Shlyakhov, an investigator with the Pechersk District Police Department, who, for some reason, quietly closed the fraud case in July.
Considering that Ms. Chebotareva also lost the lawsuit to invalidate the contracts, the family's situation is dire: not only will they still have to pay the deposit, but they'll also have to answer for forging the documents. And who, one wonders, compelled Yulia Sergeyevna to file a lawsuit? Although, if Lagun really did betray his trusting wife in the first year of their marriage, her revenge must have been quite substantial...
Igor Ilienko, for ”ORD«
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