The house of former National Bank of Ukraine Governor Valeria Gontareva, who led a clean-up of the corruption-riddled banking sector, was destroyed by an arson fire early on Sept. 17. The unknown attacker threw “a military flare or a homemade one,” into the home, police said.
Meanwhile, her nemesis, billionaire oligarch Igor Kolomoisky suggested that she might have benefitted from the arson. She, in turn, accuses him of waging a terror campaign against him because she led the bid to nationalize his PrivatBank, marred by insider fraud that caused taxpayers $5.5 billion.
“Now, it is most likely she will not be extradited [to Ukraine]. Therefore you think [about theories],” Kolomoisky wrote in response to a request from the Ukrayinska Pravda online newspaper to comment on recent reports about the fire at Gontareva’s house, according to UNIAN news agency.
Police officers found the flare in the house where Gontareva lived before moving to London a year ago. The house was uninhabited at the time. “We found a flare and a number of other pieces of evidence, which are now being analyzed by the investigators’ team,” said Mykola Zhykevych, a Kyiv oblast’s police spokesperson. According to Zhykevych, the police also obtained CCTV footage which shows an unidentified yet person penetrating at the house, which is located just outside Kyiv in a village Horenychi. He did not provide any more detail on the video content.
A security guard told the Kyiv Post that he had seen this CCTV footage, even though his shift started after the fire and he did not witness the crime. “One person was throwing big sacks with something – flammable inside I think – to the house, and then (throwing) a flare,” he recalled. “This person was wearing a balaclava (a face mask) and civil clothes.”
His colleague, the overnight guard, heard the noise, saw the flames and called firefighters and the police.
A 24-hour guard service patrolled the territory of Gontareva family house, which includes a tennis court, a pool, a BBQ area, and a pond. Up until earlier this month, a team of six guards was deployed, police said. Since then the patroling has been being done by one guard.
The guards patrolling the Gontareva house were wearing the chevrons of the Venbest private security firm, whose clients include 16 Ukrainian banks, including PrivatBank, owned by billionaire oligarch Igor Kolomoisky prior to its nationalization in 2016 amid a $5.5 billion bank fraud scandal.
The Gontareva house is surrounded by very expensive homes with CCTV cameras and warning stickers. The neighbors of the ex-NBU chief woke up in the middle of the night because of the heat and the noise caused by the fire.
“I woke up at 3:15 a.m., saw the flames and went to take a closer look like everyone else,” said a neighbor who refused to give his name. “We all worried, of course, how cannot you – the neighbor’s house is burning. Whatever the person is like, but burning the house is mean.”
He said that he does not know Gontareva, but that the house was mainly empty and quiet for the last year. “Last evening was very quiet, suspiciously quiet.”
A few days ago, a lawyer of Gontareva, Andriy Fedur, came over to the house “to make sure everything is okay,” he said. Fedur explained he had been preparing the house for another police search, like the one that took place in the Kyiv apartment of Gontareva on Sept. 12.
“I hope that the Ukrainian law enforcement will do their work properly and find both the perpetrators and the masterminds of this crime,” said Fedur.
Fedur’s legal track record includes cases of extensive public scrutiny. He defended Alexander Avakov, son of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, when he was accused of laundering state money in the purchases of backpacks for the military. The charges against him were dropped in 2018.
Fedur also defended two members of a nationalist organization C14, prosecuted for the murder of a Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzina, who had been assassinated in Kyiv in April 2015. The case is still being heard by the court. He said that all his firm now works for Gontareva.
“The house is completely burned out… I no longer have the strength to deal with this all,” Gontareva told the Kyiv Post.
She is currently in one of London’s hospitals, recovering from injuries after she was struck by a car three weeks ago. In London, she teaches at the London School of Economics.
Arson is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
