Ukrinkom. Ukrainian ex-banker may be involved in separatist financing.
Businessman Vladimir Klimenko, who founded PJSC Ukrinkom (formerly the Ukrainian Innovation Bank - Ukrinkombank), may have been involved in financing separatists, writes 368 media.
Born in 1958 in Luhansk, Volodymyr Klimenko couldn't boast of any particular successes in life until 2001, although his official biography stated that his position as director of a Polish company's representative office provided him with a living. In reality, Volodymyr Klimenko worked in the Sumy region as a trader in confiscated non-ferrous metals, which he allegedly received from a local SBU officer, Mykola Gerasimenko. Later, Klimenko successfully changed his career path and entered the banking sector, becoming deputy chairman of the board of the Clearing House joint-stock company, and the following year, he became a manager at Brokbusinessbank. It was at this financial institution that he met Vladimir Stelmakh, who twice held the chair of the Chairman of the National Bank.
Vladimir Klimenko was exposed as a minority shareholder (9%) in PJSC Avtokrazbank, which is scheduled for liquidation by August 28, 2018, and as the temporary administrator of BIG Energy Bank, whose appointment was allegedly personally lobbied by Vladimir Stelmakh. During Klimenko's tenure, the latter was caught siphoning funds offshore to the accounts of controlled foreign entities at a Latvian bank. According to the tax service, $875 million was siphoned off in just three months. As temporary administrator of the bank, he was remembered for his constant promises to depositors about reviving the financial institution and accelerating its development. As media reported at the time, the administrator was likely simply trying to attract new depositors to the bank, whose cash was then given to "his clients" to pay off problematic deposits. But the defining period in Vladimir Klimenko's life, and also the most scandalous, was his tenure at PJSC Ukrinbank.
In 2010, Volodymyr Klymenko became chairman of the board of the oldest commercial bank, the Ukrainian Innovation Bank. This was preceded by a seemingly improbable event that caused the bank's value to plummet by at least 250 times. Back in 2007, the bank, considered one of the most promising domestic banks, was ready to buy the Israeli bank Bank Hapoalim for $200 million. The Israelis themselves were ready to complete the deal, but permission, largely formal, from the National Bank was required. And then, according to Serhiy Meshcheryak, then-chairman of the board of Ukrinbank, high-ranking officials began to engage in machinations, which subsequently resulted in the financial institution being transferred to new owners for a paltry 4 hryvnias.
According to Sergei Meshcheryak, the NBU delayed issuing the permit for eight months, hinting at the need to resolve the issue with Stelmakh, which could have cost 5% of the deal with the Israelis, or $10 million.
As a result, after the financial crisis erupted in the summer of 2008, the Israelis, who had never received permission from the NBU, abandoned the deal. Following the share transfer, the NBU immediately provided the bank with 450 million hryvnia in refinancing, while the investors, who had received the shares for a nominal sum, withdrew their investments. Soon after the deal, Mykola Gerasimenko and Volodymyr Klymenko began demanding that the bank issue loans to the entities they controlled. According to Serhiy Meshcheryak, three criminal cases were brought against him because he interfered with this. He was arrested and spent some time in pretrial detention before being forced to leave Ukraine. "After my dismissal, the Deposit Guarantee Fund appointed Ukrinbank (Ukrinkom) as the authorized bank to issue funds to depositors of another bank—the bankrupt Avtokrazbank, also owned by Klymenko. According to official data, the Deposit Guarantee Fund reimbursed the bank's depositors approximately 1,8 billion hryvnia. This is the minimum that Stelmakh, Gerasimenko, and Klimenko withdrew from the bank. They ruined the bank, driving it to bankruptcy. In December 2015, the bank was declared insolvent, and in March 2016, the NBU liquidated Ukrinbank," Meshcheryak concludes the story of the financial institution's corporate raid.
Volodymyr Klymenko himself presented his version of events, according to which it was Serhiy Meshcheryak who drove Ukrinbank to the brink of bankruptcy, and that the bank's poor financial condition was the reason the Israelis abandoned the deal, as well as the financial institution's problems that led to a change in ownership. Corruption schemes were rampant at the bank. One of the most notorious was a scheme to siphon off funds through the payroll fund. Despite the NBU's explicit prohibition on awarding bonuses to bank employees, he abused his official position to falsify official bank documents regarding his own bonuses. These amounts amounted to 1,2 million hryvnias per month. With the exchange rate at 4-5 hryvnias per dollar, auditors and investigators estimate that approximately $8 million was siphoned off from the bank through this scheme alone. Furthermore, loans secured by unsecured collateral were issued en masse. The bank lost at least $20 million during this period in just two of the largest such transactions.
The list of smaller transactions, where the collateral was uncontrolled, includes hundreds of items worth hundreds of millions of hryvnias. However, law enforcement officials are also certain that the ownership change was not without criminal involvement. In 2014, they opened a criminal case into the illegal alienation (possession) of 15% of the bank's shares in 2010, with a par value of 30,7 million hryvnias, which were allegedly fraudulently taken from two individuals—the bank's shareholders. However, this had little impact on the subsequent life of Volodymyr Klymenko, which cannot be said of the bank he heads.
Meanwhile, Ukrinbank's affairs with its new owner were not going well. According to the prosecutor's office, Ukrinbank's supervisory board chairman, Klimenko, entered into a guarantee agreement on April 8, 2013, for the purpose of accepting bribes. Under the agreement, Ukrinbank, on behalf of Energy Group LLC, was obligated to provide a bank guarantee to East Grains LLC in the amount of UAH 84,8 million to secure Energy Group LLC's obligations to East Grains LLC under an agricultural product supply agreement with the International Investment Company. According to the bank's regulations and legislation, entering into a guarantee agreement requires a preliminary decision by the bank's credit committee, as well as a conclusion and assessment of the company's solvency.
By failing to fulfill these conditions, according to the investigation, Klymenko caused the bank losses of 69,35 million hryvnias. The investigation also established that the Energy Group never submitted an application for a bank guarantee to the bank. Furthermore, the firm stated that the original agreement providing the bank guarantee was not and never had been in the company's possession. Judging by Volodymyr Klymenko's past experience, this is far from the only such case, and by December 2015, the NBU declared his financial institution insolvent, introducing a temporary administration until March. By that time, Klymenko owned 70% of the bank's shares, which held 1,9 billion hryvnias of depositors.
In October, Ukrinbank was officially declared insolvent, and since October 2015, the NBU has received approximately 300 complaints from bank clients about non-repayment of deposits. However, the temporary administration did not save the situation. Just a month after its introduction, on January 26, the bank was officially declared bankrupt. However, Volodymyr Klymenko did not give up so easily.
In July, the website of the Deposit Guarantee Fund for Individuals (DGF) reported that, according to the Unified State Register, a private notary made changes to it on July 13, according to which the bank was renamed PJSC Ukrinkom, and its legal address was changed from Kyiv to Severodonetsk (Luhansk region).
The Fund states that unidentified individuals have begun exerting pressure and attempting to seize the bank's assets, including the accounts of major depositors, and intend to transfer them to a third party. However, no attempt has been made to renew the banking license. The Fund believes these facts indicate that Ukrinbank's new management is not interested in resuming the bank's operations or satisfying creditors' rights. Meanwhile, as the statement emphasizes, re-registering the legal entity will allow major borrowers, including those affiliated with the bank's shareholders, to avoid repaying their loans. The Fund states there is a threat of third parties seizing the bank's assets and intends to appeal all such actions. Therefore, the agency calls on Ukrinbank depositors and creditors to be vigilant and report all illegal activities to law enforcement agencies. Interestingly, on the same day, the Kyiv Administrative Court of Appeal ruled to overturn the liquidation of Ukrinbank, a decision Konstantin Vorushilin, Managing Director of the Deposit Guarantee Fund, described as a typical thieves' scheme to strip assets. After the Revolution of Dignity, Volodymyr Klymenko was charged with embezzlement, fraud, and money laundering, and was also accused of sponsoring terrorism.
Thus, in April 2015, the Glavkom publication reported in an article on a number of entities financing terrorism through the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR. According to the article, many of them used Ukrinbank accounts. Furthermore, the heads of the Luhansk central branch and the Sverdlovsk branch are directly suspected of supporting terrorism in Donbas. According to the SBU, in the summer of 2014, they personally transferred almost 4,5 million hryvnias to the separatists using the bank's funds.
By topic: Ukrinkom depositors are being deprived of their legal payments.
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