BES puts Ukrbudinevstbank shareholders on wanted list

Detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) have put the shareholders of Ukrbudinvestbank (Kyiv), which was liquidated in 2023, on the wanted list for bringing the financial institution to insolvency and imposing losses of over UAH 600 million on creditors.

"The shareholders of the bank are on the wanted list. The pre-trial investigation into its other officials involved in committing a criminal offense is ongoing," the BES press release said on Tuesday, illustrated by a photograph of the central office of Ukrbudinvestbank in Kyiv.

It is noted that as part of the pre-trial investigation, BES detectives conducted more than 25 interrogations of bank employees and carried out a number of inspections. Violations in the activities of the financial institution were also confirmed by the results of an internal investigation and economic examination.

Earlier, the investigation found that the participants in the scheme had been issuing funds to individuals and legal entities for a long time without proper documentation, falsifying cash reports, indicating non-existent cash receipts, entering false data on the balances in the vault of the Kyiv Regional Directorate of the bank into audit reports, and submitting unreliable information about the financial condition of the institution to regulatory authorities.

Specialists from the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) repeatedly tried to check the large cash balances, but the bank refused access to the vault. Due to violation of restrictions on conducting operations, the National Bank recognized it as problematic, and later, due to further deterioration of the financial condition and inaction of management and shareholders, it introduced a temporary administration, which conducted an audit and established a shortage of cash.

According to the release, more than UAH 153 million, almost $5.8 million, and EUR 42,500 were missing from the vault. In total, in the equivalent of the national currency, this is over UAH 365 million.

The persons involved in the case have been charged under Part 2 of Article 28 and Part 1 of Article 218-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. They are suspected of bringing the bank to insolvency - intentional actions for selfish motives committed by persons associated with the bank in a prior conspiracy, which led to the institution being classified as insolvent and caused significant losses to creditors.

As part of the investigation, the property of the bank's majority shareholder with an estimated value of UAH 40 million was seized. In addition, civil lawsuits were filed against the suspects in the amount of about UAH 400 million.

As reported, on September 7, 2023, the NBU classified Ukrbudinvestbank as insolvent due to the lack of effective measures to improve its financial condition and its failure to comply with the requirement to eliminate violations of banking legislation and regulatory legal acts of the National Bank within a specified period after the bank was classified as problematic.

Ukrbudinvestbank was founded in 2004. According to the NBU, as of July 1, 2023, in terms of total assets (UAH 2.47 billion), it ranked 45th among 65 Ukrainian banks operating in the country.

According to information on the financial institution's website, its largest shareholders were Svitlana Demianenko (74.93%), Yulia Podhornyts and Liudmilla Minevych - 9.90% each, as well as Natalia Shyshova - 5.27%.