Case description
Oleksandr Dubilet, former board head of PrivatBank, and other bank's senior managers are accused of embezzling UAH 8.4 bln from the bank shortly before its nationalization in 2016.
The case involves three episodes connected with the funds embezzlement from the bank shortly before its nationalization in December 2016. The defendants include Oleksandr Dubilet, former board head of PrivatBank, his deputies Volodymyr Yatsenko and Liudmyla Shmalchenko, as well as former heads of the bank's departments Nadia Konopkina, Olena Bychykhina and Natalia Onyshchenko.
According to the investigation, in the first episode, the defendants paid more than UAH 136 mln in favor of the insurance company Inhosstrakh IC PJSC on the basis of false documents. The defendants did this as they realized that they would subsequently lose control over the PrivatBank funds, which was to be taken over by the state as an insolvent bank.
In the second episode, the NABU identified the embezzlement of UAH 8.2 bln of the bank's funds. According to detectives, then former board head Dubilet ordered to unreasonably write off money from PrivatBank's correspondent accounts in a European bank, allegedly to pay off debts to two agricultural trading companies. To disguise the embezzlement and legalize the scheme, the former bank officials forged bank documents and provided a fictitious loan to a legal entity affiliated with the bank. In this way, the company allegedly owed the bank the exact amount that had been previously withdrawn from PrivatBank's correspondent accounts.
The third episode concerns the payment of UAH 85 mln from PrivatBank in favor of a controlled company, Novopharm LLC with foreign investments, which was again carried out based on fictitious documents.
The NABU claims that the investigation into other episodes is still ongoing, so the facts of corruption at PrivatBank that have already been uncovered are not final. The total volume of materials in this case already exceeds 2,500 volumes; it has turned out to be one of the largest in the history of anti-corruption agencies. The three episodes of the case are already pending in court.
Oleksandr Dubilet is charged under Article 191, part 5; Article 366, parts 1, 2 of the CCU. Volodymyr Yatsenko and Olena Bychykhina are charged under Article 191, part 5; Article 209, part 3 of the CCU. Nadia Konopkina is charged under Article 191; part 5 of the CCU.
In February 2021, the NABU put Oleksandr Dubilet on the wanted list. The court arrested him in absentia, Dubilet himself resides in Israel. His former deputy, Volodymyr Yatsenko, fled Ukraine using a group 2 disability status after the term of duties assigned to him expired in March 2022.
In December 2019, former board head of PrivatBank Oleksandr Dubilet filed a lawsuit against the bank, the Ministry of Finance, and the Deposit Guarantee Fund seeking to invalidate the contract for the sale of the bank's shares for UAH 1.
Nevertheless, on February 15, 2023, the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court rendered a ruling by which it confirmed the legality of the PrivatBank nationalization. The SCU effectively upheld the first instance court's decision to close the case.
PrivatBank attracted the attention of anti-corruption and law enforcement agencies not only in this case. Its ex-owner, Ihor Kolomoiskyi, has been served with at least three suspicion notices of fraud, bank funds embezzlement, money laundering, and even organizing a contract killing since 2023. Read more about other cases involving Kolomoiskyi and PrivatBank in our analytical article.
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