Kolomoisky embezzlement case to be sent to court

Ukrainian law enforcement agencies have completed an embezzlement investigation against the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, with the case now ready for trial, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) announced on July 23 in a press release.

Kolomoisky, the former owner of Ukraine's largest bank PrivatBank, and five of his associates were charged in 2023 with money laundering and fraud. They are accused of embezzling Hr 9.2 billion ($250 million) from PrivatBank.

The PrivatBank case ranks among Ukraine's largest-ever corruption probes.

Kolomoisky co-founded PrivatBank in 1992 but lost ownership to the state in 2016 after his management left a $5.5 billion hole in its balance sheet. He was arrested in 2023 and is the wealthiest businessman to have landed behind bars in Ukraine's independent history.

According to the investigators, Kolomoisky orchestrated the alleged fraud in 2015 while serving as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

The scheme was allegedly designed to funnel money to an offshore entity under his control and boost his ownership stake in the bank, the NABU said.

Kolomoisky allegedly forced PrivatBank to pay more than 9.2 billion hryvnias ($250 million) to a company he controlled by claiming the bank was repurchasing its own bonds at artificially high prices.

To conceal the theft, authorities say he laundered 446 million hryvnia ($12 million) through five shell companies using fake securities trades.

The embezzled funds ultimately flowed into Kolomoisky's personal accounts, which he then used to inject capital back into PrivatBank to satisfy central bank requirements, according to the NABU.

The case represents the fourth criminal episode stemming from PrivatBank's collapse. Previous charges have included a 136 million hryvnia ($3.7 million) insurance scam, a $315 million letter-of-credit fraud, and an 85.2 million hryvnia ($2.3 million) embezzlement scheme during 2021-2022.

In November 2024, Ukraine's Supreme Court definitively ended Ihor Kolomoisky's legal challenge to PrivatBank's nationalization, upholding lower court rulings and dismissing the oligarch's appeal. This decision concluded nearly five years of litigation over the 2016 seizure of the country's largest lender.

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