Vladimir Stelmakh
Throughout its history, the National Bank of Ukraine has effectively been a private shop for clans, a tool for managing the country's banking and financial system in their own interests. And for more than 15 of those years, the true master of the NBU was Volodymyr Stelmakh, the all-powerful "Grandfather," whose trusted confidants still sit in his offices. And it is to him that all questions about why Ukraine has always suffered from financial crises far more than other countries should be directed.
Vladimir Stelmakh. Excursion into the “totalitarian past”
Long before Viktor Yushchenko, a simple village accountant, became president of Ukraine, his fellow countryman Volodymyr Stelmakh, also a simple village accountant, had a distinguished career at the USSR State Bank and Vneshtorgbank. Even back then, rising from the bottom, without patrons or supporters, was incredibly difficult, even for the most talented. But Stelmakh carefully guards the secrets of his dizzying success to this day, along with other secrets of his life.
So, Vladimir Semenovich Stelmakh was born on January 18, 1939, in the village of Aleksandrivka, Velykopisarevsky District, Sumy Oblast. Few people pay enough attention to his early life, but that's a shame! Here's what's interesting: instead of serving three years in the army (or four in the navy) at 18, Volodya Stelmakh somehow ended up in the village of Kondratovka, Horlivka District, Donetsk Oblast, where he enrolled in a mining school. After graduating in 1959, he worked for six months as a freight locomotive driver at the Kondratovka-Novaya mine, then returned to his native village. It's worth noting that back then, people with flat feet or a couple of amputated toes were drafted into the army, and those who hadn't served were often questioned. I wonder what Vladimir Stelmakh answered his fellow villagers to these questions?
The next entry in his biography is his studies at the Lviv Accounting and Credit College (now the Lviv Institute of Banking). But here's the odd thing: it lasted from September 1960 to April 1962. Two years, even with his mining school background, is not enough, and who graduates in April anyway?
Nevertheless, by May 1962, Stelmakh had already found work in the district center of Romny (Sumy Oblast) as a credit inspector in a branch of the State Bank. By the standards of his native village, he had already made it, but he didn't stop there. He enrolled in correspondence courses at the Kyiv Institute of National Economy (now the Vadym Hetman National University of Economics) and rapidly rose through the ranks. In May 1964, Stelmakh served as a credit inspector in the city office of the State Bank. In November 1964, he transferred to the regional center as an economist in the Sumy regional office of the State Bank of the USSR, where in February 1967 he took the position of head of the industrial lending department. Two years later, he was transferred to Moscow, to the State Bank of the USSR, as head of the engineering industry lending department. It was obvious that someone was pulling him along. But who? It's clear that it wasn't the agronomist uncle, but someone with access to Moscow, or even working in Moscow – because Stelmakh's career didn't stop there.
Let's take another look at the milestones of Vladimir Stelmakh's youth:
- 18 years old – after serving in the army, a strong village boy for some reason went to Donbass, studied at a mining school, but worked in the mine for only six months and returned home.
- At 21 years old, the failed miner and collective farmer went to study to become an accountant all the way to Lviv, where he allegedly received a technical school diploma in less than two years, and in April.
- 23 years old – Stelmakh gets a job at the State Bank branch in Romny (far from home), and suddenly someone gives his career as a bank employee a rapid start.
- 25 years old – Stelmakh is transferred to Sumy, to the regional office of the State Bank, where he quickly rises to the rank of department head.
- 30 years old – Stelmakh is transferred to Moscow, to the administration of the State Bank of the USSR, as head of department.
There are several conflicting theories regarding the identities of Vladimir Stelmakh's mysterious patrons. The most reliable sources skelet.org It is claimed that Stelmakh owed his career to the parents of his first wife, information about whom he always hid at all costs (it is only known that they had a daughter, who now lives in Moscow). However, for a long time, Stelmakh also kept silent about his second wife, Olga Mikhailovna Stelmakh, and only recently did it become known that her biological son (and Vladimir Stelmakh's stepson) is the scandalous journalist and member of parliament. Igor Lutsenko According to other rumors, Stelmakh allegedly never attended any mining school, but rather served time and agreed to collaborate with the KGB, which allegedly secured his career and even subsequent work abroad (for which purpose, it "amended" his biography). Finally, rumors claim that the young Stelmakh had patrons among, let's say, his friends from a club with specific interests.
Igor Lutsenko
And yet, whoever promoted Stelmakh to the leadership of the State Bank, his protégé was anything but a servile mediocrity. Everyone acknowledges that Vladimir Stelmakh possesses the talent of a financial virtuoso and the drive of a shrewd manager. Moreover, this man, who worked for nearly 30 years at the Soviet State Bank, under a completely planned economy, already demonstrated by the early 90s the flair of a capitalist financial shark. However, he turned all these talents to the benefit not of the state, but of himself—very often to the detriment of Ukraine and Ukrainians. The damage amounted to billions…
But let's continue exploring Stelmakh's Moscow career. His career stalled somewhat in the management of the USSR State Bank, where Stelmakh was "stuck" for a full decade, heading various departments in turn: lending to the machine-building industry (since 1969), lending to collective farms (since 1970), and the credit and planning department of the economic planning department (from 1973 to 1977). After that, Stelmakh "disappeared" for two whole years: his biography merely states that during this time he was studying at a specialized department of the Moscow Financial Institute (now the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation), specializing in "economist of international economic relations." But there's no mention of where or what Stelmakh worked for during this time—or was he, a nearly forty-year-old family man, already accustomed to the lifestyle of a high-ranking official, living on a stipend alone for two years? But this again raises the question: who got Vladimir Semenovich into such a prestigious specialized department, where there was a huge competition among relatives and protégés of Soviet bigwigs? And who then arranged for Stelmakh to work at the USSR Vneshtorgbank, as deputy head of the foreign credit department?
Finally, in February 1981, Vladimir Stelmakh embarked on a major assignment abroad for several years: as an economic advisor to the Cuban government. At the time, a managerial position abroad was incredibly prestigious, practically the only opportunity to experience life abroad "like in the movies." The location (country) of the assignment was crucial: Western Europe was only a dream, and Africa was practically considered exile. Cuba, a sort of socialist tropical resort, was somewhere in between: a wonderful place for a carefree life, but with little prospects for those looking to "shop around" or start a small illegal business. And was it true that one could bring cigars and rum from Cuba? They were already sold in Moscow stores.
It seems Stelmakh's mysterious patron lacked the influence to send him to head the trade mission to Germany or even Finland. And in 1985-86, something happened that first transferred him from Cuba to Vietnam (an obvious fall from grace, albeit with a very high salary in cash), and then returned Stelmakh back to Moscow, back to the management of the USSR State Bank. And not even to his old positions as department head, but rather, demoted to deputy. Whether Stelmakh advised the president of the Cuban National Bank inappropriately, or was caught in some kind of fraud, or perhaps his mysterious patron lost influence—this remains unknown. Possible reasons include the cooling of relations between Stelmakh and his first wife, which could have led to disfavor from her family. However, it could have been the other way around: the reason for their beginning divorce was the loss of the wife’s relatives’ previous position.
As a result, Stelmakh was forced to serve as a deputy in the USSR State Bank (Central Bank) from April 1986 to March 1992, with no apparent prospects for career advancement. After the Union administration was abolished in the spring of 1992, Stelmakh was not invited to work in the Russian one. Therefore, the 53-year-old "professional" returned to his homeland, now independent Ukraine, where he immediately joined the board of the National Bank.
Vladimir Stelmakh
Volodymyr Stelmakh, Head of the National Bank of Ukraine
Vladimir Stelmakh was often called Viktor Yushchenko's "godfather," allegedly helping his fellow countryman, a fellow "brilliant accountant from the village," rise from humble beginnings to become head of the National Bank (NBU). In reality, this isn't true, as these two titans of the Soviet banking economy hadn't crossed paths at all until 1992. When Viktor Yushchenko was plucked from a savings bank in Ulyanovka (Sumy Oblast) in 1985 and sent to Kyiv, Stelmakh had already been deceiving the Castro brothers in Cuba for four years. When Yushchenko became deputy chairman of Bank Ukraina in 1990, a bank created by Kyiv-based Agroprombank officials, Stelmakh was sadly poring over financial reports in Moscow—unaware of any future "Ukrainian messiah." Yushchenko's true "godfather" was Vadym Hetman, while Stelmakh only joined their group in the early 90s, but immediately came to dominate it...
It is believed that Stelmakh was invited to Kyiv by the first governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, Volodymyr Matviyenko, who resigned from his brainchild in March 1992, but thus left "his man" behind. Matviyenko hired Stelmakh so that he could count on his future assistance—and perhaps this was the key to Matviyenko's subsequent success as a banker (in particular, as the founder and owner of Prominvestbank).
After Matviyenko's departure, the core of the NBU and Ministry of Finance leadership in the 90s was the team from JSCB Ukraina: Hetman, Yushchenko, Kovalenko, Kravets, and Mityukov, along with the future scandalous bankers Viktor Gribkov and Igor Frantskevich. All of these were locals, drawn from the banking structures of the former Ukrainian SSR. But Stelmakh, who had arrived from Moscow, fit in perfectly – in every sense of the word. It suddenly turned out that his twelve years of experience as an advisor and deputy, both in Moscow and abroad, could be effectively applied at the NBU, to these inexperienced "natives" – those who had only recently moved from their Zadryshchinsky village to the republican capital to work at Agroprombank, which provided loans to collective farms. Against this backdrop, Vladimir Stelmakh truly looked like an experienced mentor – and he took full advantage of this opportunity!
Vladimir Matvienko and Vladimir Stelmakh
In 1993, with the beginning of the "great experiments" in the Ukrainian economy, the roles in this team were distributed as follows: Hetman left his post as head of the NBU for the highly significant position of chairman of the Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange (UICEX) committee. He installed Viktor Yushchenko (his former deputy at Bank Ukraina) as head of the NBU, and Volodymyr Stelmakh became Yushchenko's first deputy. But Viktor Andreevich had been a soft clay all his life, molded by his mentors into whatever they wanted: "an outstanding banker," "the best prime minister," "a patriotic president," "a pro-European integrator," and so on. Therefore, during Yushchenko's tenure as head of the NBU (1993-99), the question arose: who was in charge of Yushchenko himself, and ultimately the NBU and Ukraine's banking and financial system?
Three centers of influence formed around Yushchenko: his longtime mentor Hetman, his new mentor Stelmakh, and a "pro-Western coalition" of former Soviet and former Ukrainian diplomatic and trade mission representatives—through whom the Americans approached Yushchenko. It's possible that the murder of Vadym Hetman in 1998 was a consequence of the struggle between these centers. After all, although the murder was blamed entirely on the perpetrators (Kushnir's gang), with only the "Donetsk connection" later mentioned, many could have had a stake in Hetman's murder—including Stelmakh, who from that moment on became virtually the dictator of the NBU, its master. Incidentally, Stelmakh's dictatorship is not hyperbole: he created a rigid vertical power structure within the National Bank, centered on him. Sources skelet.org They said that Stelmakh demanded that department heads coordinate all important decisions with him, even if he was on vacation at a resort at the time.
Three facts from the sad annals of the Ukrainian economy speak eloquently of Volodymyr Stelmakh's "achievements" in the 90s. First, there's the hyperinflation of 1992-94, in which Viktor Yushchenko, Vadym Hetman, and Volodymyr Stelmakh, the deputy prime minister, were directly involved. Victor PinzenikPrime Ministers Kuchma and Masol. Inflation did not arise spontaneously, but was a consequence of specific actions taken by these high-ranking officials. These included the NBU's issuance of trillions of karbovanets (including for transactions through Bank Ukraina), trading in non-cash dollars on the UICE, dual currency exchange rates, and so on.
Secondly, during this period, the Ukrainian currency (the karbovanets) fell to approximately 50 times less than the Russian ruble—a trend that continued throughout the subsequent period. Indeed, we've forgotten that in 1996, karbovanets were exchanged for hryvnia at a rate of 1 to 100,000, while the Russian ruble denomination in 1998 was at a rate of 1 to 1000. To the uninitiated, these figures meant absolutely nothing, but financiers saw certain shady processes behind them.
Third, the architecture of the Ukrainian financial system created by Stelmakh turned out to be heavily dependent on the Russian one: as soon as the ruble fell in Russia, the Ukrainian hryvnia also fell flat on its face, sometimes for no apparent reason. Was this a coincidence or a special assignment from Moscow? This first happened during the 1998 crisis: the default in Russia suddenly hit Ukraine with all its might, as if their economies were "paired." One of the main reasons for this was the manual triggering of an artificial "Ukrainian default," initiated by the leadership of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) (Yushchenko, Stelmakh). Holders of Ukrainian bonds were informed that payments on them were being deferred—and the very next day the hryvnia plummeted, and store prices soared. Volodymyr Stelmakh, meanwhile, exploited this situation to firmly establish control over wholesale currency sales by the NBU (i.e., his own). However, during the year and a half of the crisis, the hryvnia still fell by almost 2,5 times: in the spring of 1998, the dollar was worth 1,87 hryvnias, in the winter it was 3,42 hryvnias, and by the end of 1999, it was 4,52 hryvnias. This decline was all the more strange (somewhat artificial) given the acute shortage of hryvnias in the country, triggering a serious non-payment crisis. It continued until early 2000, when Yushchenko, now prime minister, began generously paying off all debts with money printed by the National Bank, where Stelmakh was already serving as acting chairman, with the approval of Finance Minister Mityukov (from the Bank Ukraina team). This clearly resembled part of a larger political conspiracy.
Sergey Varis, for skelet.org
CONTINUED: Vladimir Stelmakh: Father of the Ukrainian "Banking Mafia" Part 2
Subscribe to our channels in Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, VC — Only new faces from the section CRYPT!