Head of the National Bank of Ukraine hands in resignation, reveals how much insolvent banks owe the country
On April 10, the head of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Valeria Hontareva handed in her resignation. She spoke about this during an unscheduled press conference.
“After nearly three years of being the head of the NBU, I have decided to leave this position. I gave the president official notice of resignation at my own wish as of April 10 this year,” she said. She added that according to tradition, she is giving notice of this staff change in the NBU one month in advance. Thus Hontareva will leave her position on May 10, although this could take place earlier if parliament votes in favor of this decision.
Irina Lutsenko, the president’s representative at the Verkhovna Rada, said that President Petro Poroshenko is planning to meet with Valeria Hontareva and to hear her arguments for resigning. Lutsenko said this at the end of a meeting of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc (BPP) party with the head of state. She added that the president highly appreciated the work of Valeria Hontareva in her position as the head of the National Bank.
Jerome Vacher, official representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was also satisfied with Hontareva’s work. During the briefing he praised Hontareva “for the progress she made in strengthening the NBU, purging the bank system and managing monetary credit policy”.
“It will be important to choose a new executive with highly professional qualities and independence, which will enable him to continue along the good path which Valeria Hontareva has placed the NBU on,” Vacher said.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (GPU) said that there is sufficient evidence to hold NBU Head Hontareva accountable. GPU Prosecutor Vladislav Kutsenko made a statement to this effect.
“I am confident that she will not escape responsibility before the Ukrainian people. There is a theory, which several Ukrainian politicians believe, that Hontareva’s resignation will remove her from her active phase in politics, and so everyone will forget what she has done, and she may somehow be able to avoid responsibility,” Kutsenko said.
The prosecutor pointed out that he will personally request that the law enforcement agencies accelerate the investigation of all the cases related to Valeria Hontareva. Previously, in January 2017, the National Anti-Corruption of Ukraine (NABU) initiated criminal proceedings against Hontareva and Konstantin Vorushilin, Director-Manager of the Deposit Guarantee Fund for physical entities. They were accused of involvement in fraud with liquidated bank assets amounting to roughly 315.6 billion hryvnia ($11.74 billion USD).
“We’re talking about an artificial underestimation of the value of the assets of 68 liquidated banks from 415 billion hryvnia ($15.74 billion USD) to 99.4 billion hryvnia ($3.7 billion USD), with the goal of selling these assets dirt cheap to controlled entities, which in turn leads to deplorable consequences for the economy and massive unpaid debts of the investors in such banks,” Kutsenko said previously.
At a press conference on April 10, Valeria Hontareva herself spoke in front of the NBU about Ukrainian banks’ debts and loan refinancing. According to Hontareva, the state financial institutions have debt amounting to 15.2 billion hryvnia ($570 million USD), of which 14.4 billion hryvnia ($540 million USD) is the nationalized Privatbank. The head of the NBU gave her assurance that “unknown businessmen, the prior owners of bankrupt banks up to that point have not returned 45.2 billion hryvnia ($1.68 billion USD) to the state”.
“The country must know its heroes of woe. This is why you have here the list of insolvent banks, the biggest debtors when it comes to the refinancing of loans, and the names of their former owners. These are very well-known Ukrainian oligarchs and businessmen,” the head banker of Ukraine stated.
According to her, Nadra Bank (Dmitry Firtash) owes the NBU 9.8 billion Hryvnia ($ 360 million USD); DeltaBank (Mykola Lahun) – 8 billion hryvnia ($300 million USD); “Finances and Credit” (Konstantin Zhevago) – 6.3 billion hryvnia ($230; million USD); Imexbank (Oleg Klimov) – 3.4 billion hryvnia ($130 million USD). However, Hontareva insists that the bank’s bankruptcy does not mean that the money does not have to be repaid.
“State money must be returned, period,” Hontareva summarized.
With respect to PrivatBank, Hontareva said that its management withdrew 16 billion hryvnia from the institution the night before nationalization.
“The postaudit of PrivatBank has been carried out now. Not only were the identified problems confirmed, they were expanded. It wasn’t 97% of the corporate portfolio that was withdrawn by related entities, it was all 100%. This means that it needs to be recapitalized even more, and the state will have to invest even more money in order to compensate the losses for the way this so-called team of oligarchs and managers ran the bank,” Hontareva said.
Former shareholder of Privatbank Ihor Kolomoyskyi commented on Hontareva ’s accusations with swearing in video clips, TSN reported.