On November 11, the panel of judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine partially granted the motion of the SAPO prosecutor and recovered bail in the amount of UAH 5 million from Liudmyla Shmalchenko, one of the defendants in the PrivatBank case.
Such a motion was submitted due to the fact that Shmalchenko was hiding from the court and left the territory of Ukraine in October 2022. She has been attending court hearings in the online mode, but has already missed some—on April 22 and June 24, 2024. Moreover, Shmalchenko used to skip hearings, for example, at the beginning of the year on January 25.
Shmalchenko has been wanted since October 5, 2023. The prosecutor filed a motion to collect UAH 50 million bail and increase its amount to UAH 75 million.
Shmalchenko and her defense attorneys emphasized that the accused had informed about the reasons for her non-appearance in advance, which were valid.
The court partially recovered Shmalchenko's bail and set a new bail amount—UAH 51 million. The court also refused to close the criminal proceedings, as requested by the defense.
According to the investigation, those involved in the case paid more than UAH 136 million to the insurance company before the nationalization of the bank based on fictitious documents, embezzled UAH 8.2 billion through the debiting of funds from the bank’s accounts, and paid UAH 85 million to the related company Novofarm.