Businessman Vladimir Klimenko, who founded PJSC Ukrinkom (formerly Ukrainian Innovation Bank - Ukrinkombank) and is the chairman of the company's supervisory board, using a cunning scheme, removed Ukrinbank from the list of individuals liquidated by the Deposit Guarantee Fund, embezzling millions of hryvnia. How this scheme worked and who Klimenko is read in this material.
Vladimir Klimenko, born in 1958 in Lugansk, until 2001 could not boast of any particular success in life, although the position of director of a representative office of a Polish company, according to his official biography, provided money for living.
In reality, Klimenko worked in the Sumy region as a dealer in confiscated non-ferrous metals, which was allegedly supplied to him by local SBU officer Nikolai Gerasimenko. Later, Klimenko successfully changed his activity profile and he entered the banking sector, becoming deputy chairman of the board of JSB Clearing House, and the following year he became the manager of Brokbusinessbank. In this financial institution, he met Vladimir Stelmakh, who twice occupied the chair of the head of the National Bank.
Vladimir Klimenko was revealed as a minority shareholder (9% of shares) of Avtokrazbank PJSC, which was planned to be liquidated before August 28, 2018, and also as a temporary administrator of BIG Energy Bank, whose appointment was allegedly lobbied personally by Vladimir Stelmakh.
During Klimenko’s work, the latter was caught in a scheme to withdraw funds abroad to the accounts of controlled foreign structures in one of the Latvian banks. According to the tax service, in just 3 months, $875 million was spent this way.
As a temporary administrator of the bank, he was remembered for his constant promises to depositors about the revival of the financial institution and increasing its pace of development. As the media wrote then, in this way the administrator most likely simply tried to attract new depositors to the bank; the cash was given to “his clients” to repay the problematic deposit. But the main period in the life of Vladimir Klimenko, and the most scandalous, was his work at PJSC Ukrinbank.
In 2010, Vladimir Klimenko headed the board of the oldest commercial bank, the Ukrainian Innovation Bank, which was preceded by a seemingly incredible story that contributed to a drop in the bank’s price by at least 250 thousand times.
Refinancing and Israel
In 2007, one of the most promising domestic banks was ready to buy the Israeli bank Bank Hapoalim for $200 million. The Israelis themselves were ready to make the deal, but they required permission, largely formal, from the National Bank. And here, according to the then chairman of the board of Ukrinbank, Sergei Meshcheryak, the machinations of high-ranking officials began, because of which the financial institution subsequently became the property of new owners for a ridiculous 4 thousand hryvnia.
According to Sergei Meshcheryak, for 8 months the NBU delayed issuing a permit, hinting at the need to resolve the issue with Stelmakh, which could cost 5% of the amount of the agreement with the Israelis, that is, $10 million. As a result, after the start of the financial crisis in the summer of 2008, the Israelis, who had not received permission from the NBU, abandoned the agreement.
After the transfer of shares, the NBU immediately allocated refinancing to the bank in the amount of 450 million hryvnia, and investors who received the shares for symbolic money refused to invest. Soon after the operation, Nikolai Gerasimenko and Vladimir Klimenko demanded that the bank issue loans to structures controlled by them. According to Sergei Meshcheryak, since he interfered with this, 3 criminal cases were initiated against him at once. He was arrested and spent some time in a pre-trial detention center, after which he was forced to leave Ukraine.
“After my dismissal, the Deposit Guarantee Fund appointed Ukrinbank authorized to issue money to bankrupt depositors of another bank, Avtokrazbank, which was also owned by Klimenko. According to official data, the Deposit Guarantee Fund reimbursed the bank’s depositors about 1.8 billion hryvnia. This is the minimum that Stelmakh, Gerasimenko and Klimenko withdrew from the bank. They bankrupted him, brought him to bankruptcy. In December 2015, the bank was declared insolvent, and in March 2016, the NBU liquidated Ukrinbank,” Meshcheryak.
Vladimir Klimenko himself presented his version of events, according to which it was Sergei Meshcheryak who actually brought Ukrinbank to bankruptcy, and that it was the unfavorable real financial condition of the bank that caused the Israelis to refuse the deal, as well as the problems of the financial institution, which led to a change of owner. Corruption schemes flourished in the bank. One of the most striking was the scheme for withdrawing funds through the wage fund.
Despite the NBU's direct ban on bonuses for bank employees, abusing his official position, he falsified official bank documents on the payment of bonuses. These amounts reached 1.2 million hryvnia per month. At an exchange rate of 4-5 UAH/dollar, only through this scheme, according to the calculations of auditors and investigators, about $8 million was withdrawn from the bank. In addition, loans were issued en masse against unsecured collateral. In the two largest transactions of this kind alone, the bank lost at least $20 million during this period.
Energy group
The list of smaller transactions where no one controlled the collateral amounts to hundreds of positions worth hundreds of millions of hryvnias. However, law enforcement officers are also confident that the change of owner was not without crime; back in 2014, they opened a criminal case on the illegal alienation (taking) in 2010 of 15% of the bank’s shares with a nominal value of 30.7 million hryvnia, which were allegedly fraudulently taken from two individuals - shareholders of the bank. However, this did not affect the future fate of Vladimir Klimenko, which cannot be said about the bank he heads.
Meanwhile, things did not go well for Ukrinbank under its new owner. According to the prosecutor's office, the chairman of the supervisory board of Ukrinbank, Klimenko, entered into a guarantee agreement dated April 8, 2013, in order to receive bribes. Under the terms of the agreement, Ukrinbank, on behalf of Energy Group LLC, undertook to provide in favor of East Grains LLC a bank guarantee in the amount of 84.8 million hryvnia to secure the obligations of Energy Group LLC to East Grains LLC, stipulated agreement for the supply of agricultural products from the International Investment Company. According to bank regulations and legislation, in order to conclude a guarantee agreement, a preliminary decision of the bank’s credit committee is required, as well as a conclusion and assessment of the company’s solvency.
By failing to fulfill these conditions, according to the investigation, Klimenko caused damage to the bank in the amount of 69.35 million hryvnia. The investigation also revealed that the bank did not receive an application from the Energy Group for a bank guarantee. In addition, the company stated that the original agreement on the provision of a bank guarantee is not at the company’s disposal and has never been.
Lugansk scheme
Judging by the past work experience of Vladimir Klimenko, this is far from the only such case, and before December 2015, the NBU decided to declare his financial institution insolvent, introducing a temporary administration until March. Klimenko owned 70% of the bank’s shares, in which 1.9 billion hryvnia of depositors were stuck.
In October, Ukrinbank was officially declared insolvent, and since October 2015, the NBU has received about 300 complaints from bank clients about non-repayment of deposits. However, the interim administration did not save the situation. A month after its introduction, on January 26, the bank was officially declared bankrupt, but Vladimir Klimenko did not give up so easily.
In July, the website of the Deposit Guarantee Fund of Individuals (DFGFL) reported that, according to the Unified State Register, a private notary made changes to it on July 13, according to which the bank was renamed PJSC Ukrinkom, and the legal address changed from Kyiv to Severodonetsk (Lugansk region ).
The fund claims that unidentified persons began to exert pressure and tried to take over the bank's assets, including the accounts of large depositors, and want to transfer them to a third company. However, no attempt is made to restore the banking license. According to the Fund, these facts indicate that the new management of Ukrinkom is not interested in resuming the bank’s operations and satisfying the rights of creditors. Meanwhile, as noted in the message, the re-registration of the legal entity will allow large borrowers, including those present affiliated with the bank’s shareholders, to avoid repaying their loans. The Fund declares that there is a threat of third parties seizing the assets of the specified bank and intends to appeal all these actions. Therefore, the department calls on depositors and creditors of Ukrinbank to be vigilant and report all illegal actions to law enforcement agencies.
Interestingly, on the same day, the Kiev Administrative Court of Appeal decided to cancel the liquidation of Ukrinbank, which the managing director of the Federal Guaranty Fund Konstantin Vorushilin called a typical thieves' scheme for the withdrawal of assets.
After the Revolution of Dignity, sponsorship of terrorism was added to Vladimir Klimenko’s charges of theft, fraud and money laundering. Thus, in April 2015, the publication “Glavkom” in its article reported on a number of structures that financed terrorism in the form of the self-proclaimed “LPR” and “DPR”. As stated in the article, many of them used Ukrinbank accounts.
In addition, the leaders of the Lugansk central branch and the Sverdlovsk branch are directly suspected of supporting terrorists in Donbass. According to the SBU, in the summer of 2014 they themselves transferred almost 4.5 million hryvnia to the separatists at the expense of the bank.
