The NABU and the SAPO have charged former MP Oleksandr Shepelev with organizing a scheme to misappropriate over UAH 300 million from Rodovid Bank.

Oleksandr Shepelev served as a member of the Verkhovna Rada in the fifth and sixth convocations. He was a member of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc faction, which he left in 2007 to join the Party of Regions faction. He served on the Committee on Finance and Banking and on the Verkhovna Rada Audit Commission on Privatization.

In 2009, Rodovid Bank was nationalized. Yulia Tymoshenko's government chose to bail it out, recapitalizing it with UAH 8.4 billion — at the time, nearly $1 billion. As a result, 99.97% of the bank's shares passed into state ownership. Alongside the change in ownership came a change in the bank's leadership.

According to the prosecution, following these sweeping changes at Rodovid Bank, Oleksandr Shepelev entered into a criminal conspiracy with his wife Halyna Shepeleva and the bank's interim administrator Serhii Shcherbyna. Their objective was to misappropriate funds by manufacturing fictitious financial liabilities. To forge and sign the documentation, the scheme drew in then-chairman of the bank's board Dmytro Yehorenko.

In August 2009, acting as an accomplice on Shepelev's instructions, Yehorenko signed a series of fictitious documents on behalf of the bank, including a lease agreement and supplementary contracts. The agreements were backdated to February 2009, allowing the conspirators to disguise the crime as commercial activity that purportedly predated the introduction of the interim administration.

On the basis of these forged certificates and contracts, between September 2009 and March 2010, UAH 18 million was transferred from the bank's accounts to Shepelev's wife Halyna's personal account.

The former MP is charged under Articles 27(3) and 191(5), and 27(3) and 209(3) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

On December 18, 2024, the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv found Halyna Shepeleva guilty of aiding the misappropriation of another's property through abuse of office. The court sentenced her to seven years' imprisonment, a three-year ban on holding certain positions, and confiscation of her property. The verdict has not yet entered into force and is on appeal.

Oleksandr Shepelev is also known for other criminal episodes. In 2013, he was detained in Hungary on suspicion of organizing the murders of Interior Ministry Colonel Roman Yerokhin and banker Serhii Kyrychenko, the attempted murder of banker Serhii Diadechko (a shareholder of the liquidated Soiuz Bank), and the embezzlement of state funds allocated to refinance Rodovid Bank.

Following his extradition to Ukraine in 2014, Shepelev feigned illness, escaped from a hospital, and fled to Russia, where he subsequently obtained asylum in exchange for cooperation with the FSB. This formed the basis for opening a high treason case against him. After falling out with Russian law enforcement over an attempted bribe, however, he returned to Ukraine and was apprehended in 2018 carrying an employee ID of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" Ministry of State Security.

In 2020, the Desnianskyi District Court of Kyiv sentenced him to seven years' imprisonment for escape from custody and the bribery of a public official.

In 2022, the Obolonskyi District Court of Kyiv found Oleksandr Shepelev guilty of organizing the 2003 murder of AvtoKrazBank owner Serhii Kyrychenko and sentenced him to 15 years' imprisonment with confiscation of property. Shepelev is currently serving his sentence at the Kyiv pre-trial detention facility.