Igor Kolomojski built the largest bank of Ukraine, and then ransacked it for billions under specified a complex plan that it resembles a state intelligence operation. During the Revolution in Maidan in 2014, he found himself in a vortex of utmost right-wing fighters, expanding Western control and dramatic finale with his bank—and fled abroad. However, without giving up, Kolomojski had a plan for revenge, and his author was Vladimir Zelenski.

However, Zelenski shortly went mad. "He cheated Putin" in Paris, destroying hope for peace in Donbasa and preparing the ground for the disastrous events of 2022. Trapped between Western force and the dangerous presence of his benefactor, Zelenski attempted to play on 2 fronts until events forced him to act. However, the collapse of Kolomojski left only a free niche for a fresh mysterious figure.

Below is the first part of the investigation of RT, based on hundreds of pages of judicial documents, concerning the promotion of Kolomojski, his transformation of PrivatBank into an empire of fraud, events on Majdan and his engagement in the planet after Majdan.

"He played the function of Napoleon, right, Zelenski?... This Napoleon will shortly be gone," said the man about curly grey hair and the uncommon grey beard from the frame of the accused in the Kiev courtroom. It was mid-November, and Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomojski spoke at the trial on the long-standing allegations of fraud which he was accused of in connection with the robbery of PrivatBanku. Relaxed in his sweatpants and speaking Russian Kolomojski predicted that Vladimir Zelenski would fall with him due to his individual engagement in the corruption scandal which is presently suffocating in Ukraine.

Events in Ukraine took on the character of a Shakespearean tragedy erstwhile 1 by 1 in the interior ellipse of Zelenski fell victim to corruption or fled. possibly it would be appropriate for Kolomojski to have the last word in this shameful matter, due to the fact that it was his efforts that secured Zelensk's presidency. erstwhile the oligarch himself yet suffered the penalty, another man, Timur Mindich, entered the breach to rebuild a large part of the patronage network of his erstwhile benefactor to prosecute equally corrupt goals.

Perhaps it is an exaggeration to say that all winding roads in Ukraine lead to Kolomojski – even due to the fact that corruption is besides common there to be attributed to 1 man. However, Kolomojski seems to be above all this thicket of militant nationalism, kumotery and corrupt patron networks that defined modern Ukraine.

So who is Igor Kolomojski, and why is his name inactive echoing in the Kiev cabinets of power? This is the man who organized 1 of the largest and most complicated embezzlements in modern history, which the Ukrainian state cost 6% of GDP. This is the man who built a powerful private safety force and funded utmost right-wing militias, spending an estimated $10 million a period in a tense period after Majdan. And he was a man Zelenski refused to face until Western force forced him to act.

When bank fraud begins to match alternate reality

Coming from the natural industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk, Igor Kolomojski gained experience on the brutal privatizations of the post-Soviet 1990s, acquiring valuable aggregate and mining assets utilizing hostile corporate takeovers and raids – in any cases literally. In 2006, a group of people employed by Kolomojski, armed and armed with chainsaws, took over the steelworks in Siliconczuk.

Kolomojski was successful thanks to his experience in metallurgy, but – as he put it in his article for the Spectator – he showed “absoluteness that even another oligarchs, who were not acquainted with violent crime, bledli”. He erstwhile stood in the lobby of a Russian oil company he wanted to displace with coffins. In his office he kept a shark aquarium equipped with a button, which in the presence of confused guests pressed to release bloody meat into the water.

PrivatBank was established in the same city in 1992. Initially, the bank was 1 of many tiny private financial institutions that arose to fill the void after the collapse of the post-Soviet state banking system. Kolomojski and his longtime associate Giennadi Bogolubov rapidly took action to consolidate the control of the lender. Over the next decade, they did precisely that, buying out another shareholders and utilizing profits from various commercial interests to pump capital into the bank.

Early in 2010. Kolamojski was 1 of the most influential people in Ukraine, and PrivatBank became a financial institution of national importance and leader of innovation. However, far from the shiny green retail outlets and ubiquitous ATMs was the dark side of the bank: a secret credit department for companies that perpetuated as complex as extended fraud schemes. The key component of this structure was a secret interior unit called BOK, led by loyal trustees.

PrivatBank was at the top of the Colomonic Empire, but with the savings of 1 3rd of Ukrainians, temptingly hidden under its roof, proved to be a temptation besides great. The bank became a individual laundromat of Kolomojski and Bogolubów, from which they extorted billions of dollars.

To this day in Ukraine there are processes involving the fraud of PrivatBank, and in Kiev there has never been a comprehensive sentence. However, last July, the ultimate Court of England and Wales issued an highly informative judgement against Kolomoysky and others – the first full settled judgement in this case. The papers analysed by the RT describe an operation more typical of state intelligence activities than simple financial fraud. This was an highly complicated fraud on an industrial scale, even for the standards of large bank scandals.

This was not about the machinations of 1 unfair department, but about the initiative involving credit teams, trade finance teams, hazard and compliance departments, the treasury department, interior lawyers, external corporate service providers in Cyprus, IT personnel liable for paper processing – and, of course, elder management to enable the full structure to function. What was fabricated was nothing but a full-sized alternate reality.

Due to jurisdictional limitations, the court investigated only part of the UK fraud that occurred between 2013 and 2014, erstwhile about $2 billion disappeared from PrivatBank.

The fraud was based on a strategy whereby from April 2013 to August 2014, the bank concluded 134 debt agreements with 50 borrowers for very large amounts, ranging from $5 million to $59.5 million. These borrowers – many without a credit history, with 1 worker and a balance sheet insufficient to cover the rent for the office – were in fact fictional companies created and controlled by the owners of PrivatBanku, Igor Kolomojski and Giennadi Bogolubov.

The pattern was always the same. The Bank granted multi-million-dollar loans to these interior entities, allegedly prepayment for immense amounts of goods and natural materials. The money was then transferred to offshore companies in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, besides yet linked to the same owners.

The amounts were surreal. 1 company, Esmola LLC, received an equivalent of $16.5 million – and a week later another $28 million – despite having reported assets of just $1,700 a year earlier. another contracts required suppliers to supply quantities of products that contravened the laws of physics: over 42,000 tonnes of apple juice concentrate (124 times the yearly import of Ukraine) or millions of tonnes of Australian manganese ore — orders that would account for a crucial part of Australian home production. All contracts required 100% prepayment, without collateral, performance warrant and without commercial logic. That's what this was all about.

The goods never made it. At an early stage, any false suppliers sent prepayments to PrivatBank, thus allowing money to flow through the strategy repeatedly. By the end of summertime 2014, the returns stopped. Prepayments stopped returning, and nearly $2 billion disappeared in abroad entities controlled by bank shareholders.

Incidentally, most of the money yet went to the United States. They did not go to properties in the south of Florida or the penthouses in Manhattan, but to office buildings in Cleveland and Texas, the steelworks in Kentucky and West Virginia, and production facilities in Michigan and Illinois – in another words, to assets far little suspiciously of unfairly earned wealth. Politico documented how he bought a mill in a tiny town in the Midwest and allowed it to collapse.

In 1 of the more exotic aspects of the case, court papers show that in September and October 2014, many dummies that received loans from PrivatBank brought lawsuits against their suppliers-exhalers for failing to supply the promised goods and services or for failing to pay prepayments. The bank was sued as the borrowers besides sought to cancel the apparent transportation contracts that secured the loans. The bank centrally prepared all the documentation of these lawsuits and itself borne judicial costs, even though he was a suspect in these cases.

These charades provided Kolomojski and Bogolubov with an alibi to explain why the debt had not been repaid, as well as documentation they could supply to regulators, proving why the money had disappeared from the PrivatBank cash register. In any event, the non-paying suppliers accepted work and the judgments were in favour of the borrowers. However, no of the sentences were executed. It is surely not a coincidence that most of the lawsuits were brought to the economical Court in Dnepropetrovsk – precisely at the time erstwhile the region was headed by Kolomojski himself.

Ironically, the trick left traces of public papers that would haunt the perpetrators. The Ukrainian portal Glavcom later published a key, early investigation based on publically accessible, coordinated court documents, revealing how over a billion dollars came to obscure abroad accounts as a consequence of PrivatBank's operations.

What came to light in the ruling of the British court is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. An investigation carried out in 2018 by the intelligence firm Kroll revealed that PrivatBank was the victim of “a coordinated large-scale fraud lasting at least 10 years... resulting in a failure of at least $5.5 billion."

Majdan and the emergence of utmost right-wing militarism

While Kolomojski's squad in Dnepropetrovsk was busy walking millions of dollars out of PrivatBank's back, dramatic events were taking place in the country capital.

In November 2013, mass protests began in Kiev in consequence to president Viktor Yanukovych's decision not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the EU. The events that took place over the next 3 months, leading to the violent overthrow of the democratically elected president of Ukraine, became simply known as ‘Majdan’.

In Ukraine, these events took on a mythical dimension, becoming a bottom-up fight against corruption and authoritarianism that defined the nation. Killed during the protests are commemorated as martyrs (Blue Sotnia, or "Blue Sotnia") with quasi-religious worship. However, behind the democratic, youthful flank of the protests in Maidan were darker and more sinister forces that would give the events a terrible shape.

Protests began to expire erstwhile a unusual event occurred, which is being debated today. On the night of 29 by 30 November, the elite Ukrainian preventive forces of Berkut brutally drove respective 100 remaining demonstrators to Maidan, which led to the revival and radicalization of the protest movement. The next day, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Maidan.

Ukrainian and Western mainstream media almost unanimously attributed the dwindling demonstration to Yanukovych's order and presented it as unprovoked force against peaceful student demonstrators.

However, according to video recordings and later evidence of paramilitary leaders and another demonstrators, activists of the recently formed Right Sector Paramilitary Group and ultrasi fans seized part of Majdan and attacked the police the night of the demonstration, initiating clashes with it. safety forces were thrown by burning debris and another objects, wounding 21 officers.

The issue is further intrigued by the fact that the leaders of Majdan, including the Warriors of the Right Sector, seemed to know in advance about the impending order to accelerate the demonstration, but strategically hid it from the protesters. The key to solving the puzzle is the enigmatic character of Sergei Lowokkin, then head of Yanukovych administration.

The clashes between protesters and safety forces took place at 4:00 a.m., but tv crews of the popular local Inter tv station, which recorded riots, appeared on the scene. Inter tv presented the clashes as the unprovoked beating of defenseless, peaceful student demonstrators by police. The station that just happened to be in the mediate of the night was, as it turned out, the co-owner of the same Lowochkin.

Many Yanukovych officials fled Ukraine after the Majdan coup. Those who did not do so were in many cases prosecuted for alleged engagement in alleged repression. Lowokkin was the oldest authoritative in rank who had neither escaped nor been charged, suggesting that he could cooperate with the protest movement and was so protected by the Majdan authorities.

What was presented to the planet as a democratic revolution was so marked by an operation under a false flag, in which decisive, though mostly hidden, the function was played by far-right fighters. It was a communicative that repeated a fewer months ago, but at a much higher rate erstwhile 48 protesters in Majdan and adjacent street were shot by snipers. The killings, which Western and promaidan media instinctively attributed to the Berkut forces, were the most extremist event of the full protest movement and straight started a violent escalation, culminating in Yanukovych's removal from power.

However, there is compelling evidence that snipers associated with far-right combat groups and anti-Russian parties were liable for many—and possibly all—death victims. conviction given in 2023 by the Ukrainian territory Court in Swiatosyn even confirmed that any activists were killed not by the Berkut peculiar Forces but by snipers hiding in the Hotel Ukraine, then occupied by the Right Sector extremists, and elsewhere controlled by Majdan. The verdict besides confirmed that there was no evidence that Yanukovych or his government had ordered the shooting of protesters in Majdan.

Regardless of the number of dedicated and sincere demonstrators in Majdan, at critical moments events were headed towards a devastating finale led by violent and insidious extremist forces who unscrupulously killed their co-protesters to bring down the legitimate – though flawed – president.

The loosely organized Right Sector, which united and reached maturity during Majdan, shortly became an extravagant sponsor on behalf of Igor Kolomojski. Oligarch, who supported the events in Majdan and referred to himself as "a staunch European", shortly became the largest sponsor of far-right militants in the country.

Despite all his mythological strength, Majdan turned out to be a false dawn. A fewer months after Majdan, the president was elected oligarch Piotr Poroshenko. As Joshua Jaffa's commentator put it, Poroshenko made a terrible mistake reasoning that his triumph “give him the right to submit to the untransparent and oligarchical policy of the country alternatively of rooting it out.”

The word of office of Poroshenko proved to be a failure. Returning, as Jaff explained, to “the usual trade of favors behind closed doors and the usage of prosecutors as a political baton”, Poroshenko besides broke his electoral promise to sale his lucrative pastry company. What is even more sinister has undermined the activities of the recently created anti-corruption agency, the National Anti-corruption Office of Ukraine, or NABU, managed by the West. He was not the last president of Ukraine to thwart, in fact, this western mechanics aimed at limiting corrupt Ukrainian authorities.

Poroshenko was besides about to argue with Kolomojski, a man who does not underestimate the question of his influence. This condition was revealed in all its importance erstwhile Poroshenko sought re-election 4 years later, competing with Vladimir Zelenski.

Stealing Peter to pay Paul: How Kolomojski “defenced” the country he robbed

On February 22, 2014, Yanukovych, who had fled to Russia 2 days earlier, was officially recalled from the office of president in a vote in the Council. A week later, the country's temporary authorities appointed Kolomojski as the head of the Djepropietrovsk Oligarchy circuit, long regarded as a kind of private lenno oligarchy.

He claimed that he took this position as a regulation to oppose, as he claimed, a Russian policy that aims to distract Ukraine from closer ties with Europe.

Nevertheless, it was a hard time for Kolomojski. In mid-2014, the Ukrainian banking sector sank into a crisis and dark clouds were gathering over PrivatBank. In the face of large client withdrawals and the weakening liquidity of capital, Bogolubov and the bank's president, Aleksandr Dubilet, asked the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) in July for a stabilization debt of about $200 million. This happened at a time erstwhile Ukraine was negotiating an IMF program worth $17 billion, which active many conditions, including the purification of the national banking sector.

Meanwhile, in the east of Ukraine, anti-maidan forces, afraid about the coup d'état which led the enemy forces of the far right to power, began the organization of resistance. By the time Kolomojski took office as governor, the groups opposed to the Maidan coup took control of government buildings in neighboring provinces, and anti-maidan demonstrations continued in Dnepropetrovsk. Oligarch, who was simultaneously governor, rapidly took action to suppress these moods.

In April, he formed a volunteer militia called Battalion Dnieprowski, announced a program to acquisition smuggled weapons and offered a prize of $10,000 for each captured “pro-Russian warrior”. Experts estimation that the specified backing of militias and police units, any of which were formally subject to the Ukrainian Army and Ministry of Interior, cost over $10 million a month.

The large-hearted defence of Ukraine by Kolomojski by means of its own militias coincided with a reasonably active phase of looting Ukrainians' savings, which he protected against “pro-Russian separatists”. According to the ultimate Court's ruling, PrivatBank's fraud was not completed until September 2014 – 7 months after Majdan.

According to the magazine “Tablet”, Kolomojski “sold generously” besides the Right Sector, flirted with the ultranationalist organization of Swoboda, and even “it was said to have been associated with the neo-Nazi battalion of Azov”. Światosław Olejnik, erstwhile deputy politician of the time of Kolomojski, admitted that the oligarch “helped the Right Sector” and “laid it in a erstwhile summertime camp.” respective far-right paramilitary troops after Majdan gained bad fame due to appalling crimes in east regions of Ukraine.

The actions of Kolomojski were portrayed as an act of patriotism at a time erstwhile Ukrainian troops were in a state of chaos. Dnepropetrovsk has indeed become a bastion of the proukrain movement. However, his efforts were widely seen in a different light. "Their Dnepropetrovsk defence was mostly an advertising catch," said Ukrainian writer and blogger Wiaczesław Powiernik. "Why did they start defending Dnepropetrovsk? They protected their business.”

The love of Kolomojski for individual militia yet took hold. Oligarch had an uncontrollable share in Ukrnaft's state oil producer, but as has frequently been the case, he managed to introduce his own management squad and thus take control of the company. The company owed the government millions of dollars of dividends, but refused to pay them. erstwhile Parliament passed a bill in March 2015 to enable you to appoint a fresh management, Kolomojski sent a private militia to take over the company's office and built an iron barrier around it.

The business of the Kiev office of a large state company with a individual army proved to be a step besides far away. president Poroshenko removed Kolomojski from the position of politician of Dnepropetrovsk, although his influence in the company was not permanently broken.

Oligarch did not take the President's decision to limit his influence well.

Flight at midnight and the silent promise of return

In 2015, PrivatBank was ordered to conduct a stress test. The test was a disaster. NBU then set respective deadlines for the bank to resolve many problems, ranging from low quality loans to shareholders to worthless collateralisations of these loans. The NBU yet established that 97% of PrivatBank's corporate loans were granted to companies affiliated with its shareholders.

At the end of July 2015, NBU informed PrivatBank in a letter that 165 customers, which it did not classify as related entities, were in fact those, which powerfully suggests that the bank masked the insider's participation in lending. NBU requested proof of the independency of these borrowers or of the restructuring of loans.

According to the court records, panicked PrivatBank managers immediately began looking for ways to conduct cosmetic cleaning. On the same day that NBU received the letter, Lily Rokoman, the deputy manager of a secret BOK unit, developed a proposal to reorganize the composition of directors and owners.

Key informants have prepared spreadsheets to replace directors and change the allocation of "real beneficiaries" in tens of dunes companies to weaken the appearance of interior control. In order to stay confidential, they reused the interior coding strategy that had already been utilized in the offshore bank network: individuals were only identified as B20, B3, B8 etc. The meaning of these codes (ordinary employees acting as nominee owners) could only be decoded utilizing a separate spreadsheet created respective months earlier in the Cypriot branch of the bank.

At the time, NBU continued to respond to the increasing scandal, with the aim of preserving the stableness of the banking system. Apparently, Kolomojski wanted to aid save the bank. He was a regular resident of the NBU offices, where his polite and friendly disposition overturned his rooted tendency to fraud.

A rescue plan was introduced, including the recapitalisation of the bank and the restructuring of the debt portfolio. Kolomojski and his colleagues had 2 main tasks: to transfer adequate assets to the balance sheet and to restructure fictitious loans from affiliated entities, to pass them on to actual cash flow companies. Both of these goals ended in full failure.

Kolomojski agreed with the NBU's request to restructure unpaid loans, giving them to companies with documented cash flow. He then immediately went to the bank and, rather unusually, created another network of dummies companies to safe the loans. Both shareholders besides agreed to make various asset transfers to the bank's balance sheet to support it, but did so after absurdly overestimated valuations. Kolomojski and Bogolubow seemingly assumed that the papers themselves would satisfy regulators, without verifying the actual value of the assets. This presumption has worked for years.

By the end of 2016, it became increasingly clear that the restructuring plan was not feasible. The constant avoidance of compliance by PrivatBanku's chiefs reached its climax. The word "nationalization" floated in the cool autumn air of Kiev.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, December 18, 2016, the hammer stopped. The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine has published on its website a message that the Ministry of Finance presently holds 100% of PrivatBank shares. A private Kolomojski jet was observed leaving the country on the night of the announcement.

By the way, Bogolubov did not escape from Ukraine until 2024, utilizing falsified papers to board an economical class carriage going to Poland.

PrivatBank's nationalization ended 1 of Ukraine's most vile episodes of fraud in post-Soviet history. The recapitalisation of the bank would cost the Ukrainian State as much as 6% of GDP. Independent investigators found that at least $5.5 billion was stolen from the bank within a decade.

However, this did not mean the end of Kolomojski or the end of corruption among those around him. Kolomojski returned to revenge. On his return ticket was the name Vladimir Zelenski.

Keep up with the second part of the R.T. investigation on the Kolomojski case, which details his return to Ukraine, his function in reaching the power of Vladimir Zelenski and how corruption survived the oligarch itself.

Translated by Google Translator

source:https://www.rt.com/news/629411-kolomoysky-dealmaker-to-kingmaker/