KIEV: The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) deliberately refused to sign an amicable agreement with bank Financial Initiative (Kyiv) that later was announced insolvent, former 100% beneficiary of the bank Oleh Bakhmatiuk has said. “The removal of bank Financial Initiative from the market was a personal whim of Mrs. Gonatareva (NBU Governor Valeriya Gontareva],” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. He said that attempts to solve the issue with other representatives of power were in vain.
“All meetings we held in the presidential administration, with the prime minister, ended just the opposite: all support us at the meetings, and then Mrs. Gontareva comes ‘with the IMF badge’ and acutally makes steps to destroy my company [Ukrlandfarming],” he said. He said that especially cynic were NBU steps after bank Financial Initiative was declared insolvent.
“In the times of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk Finance Minister Oleksandr Shlapak proposed that I buy government bonds for UAH 2 billion. Then we sold these bonds to the NBU at the even money. Actually I made a kindness to the government, but Gontareva when she introduced temporary administration to the bank set the value of these bonds one third less than they cost. She created a lack of liquidity. Moreover, we voluntarily paid one-to-one sums to depositors in addition to payments of the Deposit Guarantee Fund. However, the NBU blocked payments for us: we cannot pay to people for three months,” he said. At present the situation around the bank is developing only in court. No talks are being held with the NBU as there is no understanding what the central bank intends to do.
“If the NBU wants to change the conditions, I am ready to find a solution. I it wants to increase collateral, I am ready to speak about it. As it was said earlier, we are ready to take liabilities for seven years without discount [the amicable agreement]. I announced this in public and at the president’s room, prime minister’s room, but the NBU head insists that it is not interesting to her,” he said. Kyiv’s appeal court on September 27 rejected a counterclaim of the NBU and upheld the ruling of Kyiv’s Pechersky District court dated May 26 lifting the arrest of Bakhmatiuk’s property imposed on May 12. The property was arrested under a claim of the NBU to collect a debt to pay a UAH 4 billion stabilization loan issued to bank Financial Initiative.
On October 11, Kyiv’s administrative court of appeals upheld the ruling of the court of a lower instance that the NBU’s accusations of passivity in applying measures to protect the interests of depositors and creditors of VAB Bank 86.778% shares of which belonged to Bakhmatiuk. VAB Bank operated on the Ukrainian financial market from 1992. On March 20, 2015, the NBU decided to liquidate the bank. Bank Financial Initiative was established in 2005. Its sole shareholder as of March 2015 was Invest-Service LLC. The full beneficiary is Bakhmatiuk. The NBU placed the bank to the list of insolvent banks on June 23, 2015.
