Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau: NBU withdrew half a billion dollars from Ukraine
The Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Artem Sytnyk, said during an interview with Vysoky Zamok web site that the NABU is investigating the multimillion-dollar refinancing of banks by the National Bank of Ukraine.
"Regarding the so-called reform of the banking sector, as a result of which more than 80 banks ceased to exist, the National Police have many questions. This is not exactly our line of work. If we are talking about funds that the NBU allocated for refinancing, a large part of which was transferred outside of Ukraine, in particular through Austrian banks, this is within our sphere. We are investigating this situation," he said.
According to him, "the case concerns the management of the National Bank."
"There are a lot of banks involved in this. We are carrying out procedural activities - searches, seizure of documents - in order to establish a list of potential suspects after their analysis. The basis of this case is the verification of funds allocated for refinancing. We are interested in knowing if there were abuses by the employees of the National Bank. We are talking about large amounts of funds so it is not likely that these decisions were made without the consent of the top management of the NBU," Sytnyk said.
He added that the employees of NABU saw suspiciously large transfers of funds abroad that were allocated to the refinancing of certain banks.
"In one case, the recipient of these funds that were transferred through an offshore company was ... a driver working for a refinanced bank. Under such schemes 500 million dollars were withdrawn from Ukraine abroad. And there are also much more complicated and tricky schemes," he said.