The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) charged ex-Head of PrivatBank Oleksandr Dubilet, his first deputy Volodymyr Yatsenko, and department head Olena Bychikhina with embezzling over $2.8 million from Ukraine’s largest bank.
According to officials, the day before the bank was nationalized in 2016, PrivatBank’s senior staff paid over $7,5 million of the bank’s money to companies linked to the bank. The funds were transferred in several tranches to two different companies. The roughly $2.8 million addressed in the case went to one of those companies.
The three PrivatBank officials were already charged with embezzling back in 2021.
Prosecutor General Irina Venediktova, in February 2021, announced charges against Dubilet, Yatsenko and Bychikhina for alleged embezzlement and forgery.
Venediktova, on March 15, announced additional charges against three former PrivatBank executives, this time for embezzling $300 million.
In 2016, the bank was nationalized when it was found to have an over $5.5 billion hole in its ledger, allegedly moved out by its former owners and oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov via fraudulent schemes.
PrivatBank sued Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov in Ukraine, the U.K. and the U.S.
