What fortunes are hidden by the “millionaires” from the Deposit Guarantee Fund?

The head of the Deposit Guarantee Fund receives a salary many times higher than the president, and her subordinates are owners of luxury cars and real estate.

An electric car for 2.5 million, luxury cars, estates in Ukraine and abroad and sky-high salaries that the presidents of European countries can envy: it seems that officials of the Deposit Guarantee Fund are accustomed to living “in grand style.” At least this is evidenced by their declarations and real estate register data. However, it is likely that the management of the FGVFL is still hiding part of the precious property from the NAPC, and along with it… possible business in the aggressor country.

So what do the subordinate heads of the Deposit Guaranty Fund of Svetlana Rekrut “earn” from it? What does this have to do with the Fund’s scandalous tenders?

Against the background of the scandal with the acquisition by the Deposit Guarantee Fund of individuals of an electric car for UAH 2.5 million, the institution continues to spend a lot of money on fuel. In particular, in January of this year, the Fund announced a million-dollar tender for the purchase of 15 thousand liters of diesel. And this despite the fact that, according to YouControl, official cars run exclusively on gasoline and electricity, and only the personal cars of officials consume diesel fuel.

Thus, as the declaration shows, the managing director of the Guarantee Fund has a 2022 diesel Range Rover Sport, and her husband has a diesel Mercedes GL of the same age. Svetlana Rekrut’s father owns another diesel-powered Mercedes. Natalya Rudukha, who in February this year resigned from her position as deputy director of the Federal State Fund for Guaranty Funds after corruption scandals, also owns a diesel Audi Q5. And another deputy, Elena Nuzhnenko, drives a brand new diesel Mercedes registered to her 69-year-old mother.

The cost of these expensive cars correlates with the high salaries of Foundation employees.

“According to the declaration, in 2023 the salary of the director of the fund manager is 6,100,000 hryvnia. And the President of Ukraine has about 300,000 hryvnia. The question is, who has what level of responsibility? And this despite the fact that the president said that all unproductive expenses should simply be eliminated. And after that, they still do not hesitate to receive financial assistance from the same Deposit Guarantee Fund,” comments financial expert Dmitry.

For comparison: the director of the Foundation, Svetlana Rekrut, received a salary equivalent to $160 thousand for 2022. This is almost twice as much as the presidents of Poland, Spain, Moldova or Lithuania. At the same time, the Deposit Guarantee Fund refused to respond to StopCor’s request regarding the salaries of the institution’s management, so we analyzed this data in declarations and open sources.

Thus, according to data for 2022, more than 2.6 million per month were spent monthly on the salaries of the six members of the executive directorate of the fund. And this is only official income, without bonuses and other bonuses.

“We emphasize that the data on wages is outdated, over two years they have grown significantly and payments continue to be increased. What about the executive directorate, even the fund’s employees authorized to deal with bank liquidation issues have an annual salary in seven figures. In particular, the liquidator of the banks “Finance and Credit”, “Platinum” and other financial institutions, Svetlana Groshova, received more than UAH 1.3 million in net income in 2022 and declared jewelry worth UAH 800 thousand, including a sable fur coat, jewelry and a watch. “, notes Alla Legeza.

But that’s not all: it turns out that a person who has access to the banking database of Ukrainians can have property, business and family in Russia.

So, the year before last, Svetlana Groshova declared three cars, three apartments and parking spaces in Kyiv, an apartment and a house in the Dnieper, an estate and a number of other real estate in the Dnepropetrovsk region, an apartment and other real estate by the sea in the occupied Crimea. But in addition, she still has a lot of property in Russia, acquired from 2019 to 2022 (that is, after the start of the war in the East of Ukraine), including apartments and other non-residential premises.

Moreover, the liquidator from the Guarantee Fund, two weeks before the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, made a direct investment in the economy of the aggressor country, becoming a co-owner of the Kartek enterprise in Russia. Citizens of the Russian Federation and the company VALARTIS CONSULTING, which is the owner of RIMBORSO-RUSSIA LLC, whose main activity is operations for managing distressed assets, also have shares in this company.

Already in 2023, Groshova allegedly transferred this enterprise to her son Stanislav, who lives in Moscow and has Russian citizenship. And although the liquidator’s property was eventually seized, she is now trying in every possible way to unfreeze it through the courts.

“This indicates that Russian intelligence works on a 5-point rating scale of 5 plus. I’m sure that she appointed her son as the founder of that company, because the FSB pointed the finger at her: hey, what are you doing? These are not random people. People call them “canned food”; they are not active agents, but perform the function of providing information,” comments ATO veteran Konstantin Ilchenko.

What about the heads of the Fund's structural divisions? It turned out that they also receive seven-figure salaries.

For example, the head of the Fund’s IT department, Andrey Bashchev, according to the declaration for 2022, earned more than 2.2 million and, together with his wife, has savings of more than 10 million UAH. The family of the institution’s chief IT specialist owns four cars and apartments in the capital, one of which is in the most expensive area of ​​Kyiv in the Novopecherskaya Vezha residential complex, where housing prices start from UAH 3 million to UAH 14 million. The family also has land plots in the Makarovsky district near Kiev.

Stopkorovites decided to check them and found on Google maps that something was being built on them, but Bashchev did not note houses or unfinished construction projects in the declaration. Arriving at the site, the journalists discovered that a luxury house had already been built on the plots - visually ready, but... undeclared. According to the chairman of the public council of NAPC, Ekaterina Butko, this may be regarded as a violation in the declaration, for which, as is known, liability is provided.

“Of course, it needs to be declared. If there is a house there, if it is under construction and has not been put into operation, it must be indicated in the section on unfinished construction, and if it has already been built and put into operation, then as a house,” she notes.

Where does this condition come from? It is worth recalling that over the past two years, the institution has spent almost 200 million on purchasing IT services from companies with a criminal past and PR in the media. As StopCor learned, law enforcement officers even opened a criminal investigation into the Fund’s embezzlement. However, in response to our request, the Foundation described these costs as a “public awareness need.”

Although often such “informing” has signs of manipulation.

In particular, StopKor experienced this after our preliminary investigation aired. Instead of agreeing to the journalists’ proposal to record an interview or provide a comprehensive written answer to all questions, the institution began to put pressure on journalists through the courts and distribute discreditable publications on its own website and in partner media.

“I, as a representative of the management of the NGO “Stop Corruption,” officially declare an attempt to put pressure on our editorial office by the Deposit Guarantee Fund. Instead of answering the question, they simply went to counterattack the journalists. I would just like to warn the management of the Deposit Guarantee Fund against pressure” “If you think that after this there will be fewer questions from journalists addressed to you, you are mistaken. There will only be more of them. And therefore, get ready to give answers to these questions,” notes Roman Bochkala, co-founder of the NGO Stop Corruption.

According to media expert Alexander Chekmyshev, professor of the Department of Social Communications, Institute of Journalism, National University. Shevchenko, such actions on the part of the Guarantee Fund employees are, to say the least, unprofessional.

“When it comes to the investigation into the activities of the Deposit Guarantee Fund, journalists adhered to all the necessary standards in order to balance, to obtain answers and interviews. And it just looks funny on the one hand, but on the other hand, it inspires the idea that something is really wrong there,” he said.

This practice of communicating with requesters in the institution is not unique, says lawyer Sergei Osyka, who is suing the Foundation for ignoring his requests.

The tactics of media attacks are probably also formulaic.

According to Oleksiy Bogushko, a member of the board of the Ukrainian Innovation Company, the Guarantee Fund, with the help of the media, spread slander against the Ukrinkom company, where he also works as the head of the legal department. He noted that the company, in turn, filed a lawsuit against the co-authors of the allegedly manipulative article - people's deputy Galina Yanchenko and director of the Guarantee Fund Svetlana Rekrut.

And all this when the main goal of the Fund’s activities should be to protect the interests of depositors of liquidated banks.

In a preliminary investigation, StopCor said that the Fund does not pay more than 200 thousand to depositors of such banks. The institution responded quickly and assured that today they were returning the entire amount of deposits. Indeed, such changes are positive, and this is the merit of the parliament and the president. However, experts note that the entire deposit amount is returned only to individuals, but no one guarantees creditors and legal entities even the return of the same 200 thousand.

At the same time, the institution spends a considerable amount on business trips abroad.

But exactly how much and where employees travel is a mystery, says lawyer Sergei Osyka. As stated in the Foundation’s response to his lawyer’s request, “information on the number of business trips of the institution’s management and the amount spent on trips is closed for security reasons given the martial law.” At the same time, on social networks the Foundation and its directors openly talk about business trips abroad: the list of countries where employees have repeatedly gone on business trips includes Austria, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, and the United Kingdom.

For what purpose do management travel abroad so often with the Fund’s funds and whether the expediency of these trips is always justified is an open question. But it should also be added that the children of many leaders live and study in Europe, notes Alla Legeza.

In particular, the son of the Foundation’s director, Svetlana Rekrut, lives in the UK. According to the declaration, he lives in Cambridge, in a house rented from Tatiana Lapa Enright. As stated in an article in an Irish publication about how Svetlana Rekrut’s son went abroad as a refugee, Tatyana Lapa is the sister of the head of the Guarantee Fund. By the way, on social networks you can find many warm photos of them together. According to British registers, Tatyana Lapa owns a cosmetology clinic and a financial management consulting company.

The son of the recently fired Deputy Director of the Foundation, Natalia Rudukha, also lives in Europe. According to social networks, he lives and works in Poland. The daughter of the director of the IT department of the Foundation, Andrei Bashchev, who also has ten thousand foreign currency savings in dollars, euros and pounds, is also studying in the Netherlands.

Let us remind you that during the large-scale war, more than 185 million UAH were spent in the Fund. for IT services and laptop purchases. And the Foundation’s purchase of the Hyundai Ionic 5 electric car at a cost of about 2.5 million UAH outraged the public. This purchase even made it into a kind of hit parade of the most expensive cars purchased by the state during the invasion.