Controversial oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky is responsible for the protests in front of the headquarters of the National Bank of Ukraine in Kyiv, the central bank stated on its website on Nov. 27.
The NBU said the notorious oligarch paid the protesters to “create informational chaos” and to pressure the central bank to derail Ukraine’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and to avoid responsibility for leading the country’s largest bank PrivatBank to bankruptcy.
Some 500-1,000 people have taken part in the protests, demanding acting NBU Governor Yakiv Smolii to resign. The rallies have been going on for almost two weeks now.
“We believe that this pressure on the National Bank is exerted by the oligarch and ex-owner of PrivatBank Ihor Kolomoisky, who owes the state $5.5 billion that he siphoned from PrivatBank before its nationalization,” the central bank stated. The bank was nationalized after it went bust in 2016.
The NBU assured that “the government and the bank are united by one position that the money must be returned.”
Despite most of the protesters being the workers of the Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant owned by Kolomoisky, the oligarch himself denies any involvement in setting up the rallies.
The protesters from the same plant have also been rallying in front of PrivatBank’s head office in Dnipro since September, accusing it of being behind salary payment delays. The plant even paid $40,000 on Nov. 19 for a one-year lease of a parking lot next to the bank’s office where the protests have been taking place.
This is yet another chapter in the feud between Kolomoisky and the central bank.
When Kolomoisky co-owned PrivatBank, he used the Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant as collateral to obtain a loan from the National Bank. In 2016, PrivatBank failed to pass the National Bank’s stress test and was nationalized.
The National Bank recapitalized the bank with taxpayers’ money and sued Kolomoisky for fraud. Kolomoisky, in turn, has filed multiplied lawsuits against PrivatBank, asking to return the bank or pay compensation for raiding his property.
In 2018, a report by forensic auditor Kroll uncovered a “large-scale and coordinated fraud” scheme under Kolomoisky. The U.K. courts have also recognized that this was “a fraud of an epic scale.”
In a comment to the Kyiv Post on Nov. 22, Kolomoisky said that “the IMF knows that PrivatBank will be returned (to me).”
