Deputy Head of the Office of the President Rostislav Shurma may be the “secret patron” of the small Alliance Bank, which has recently been regularly involved in corruption scandals.
Thanks to his close relationship with Pavel Shcherban, the head of the bank’s supervisory board, Shurma can repel the NBU’s “attacks” on Alliance, as well as provide protection for the bank before law enforcement agencies, journalists .
Alliance Bank became widely known thanks to the scandal with the bribe that Alexey Nosov, lawyer of the Miller law firm, was supposed to give to detectives and SAP prosecutors on behalf of the bank in the case of damage to Ukrenergo. Despite the fact that formally the main shareholder is Alexander Sosis, the former chairman of the board of ASKA insurance company Rinat Akhmetov, in reality everything is decided by the chairman of the supervisory board, 40-year-old Pavel Pavlovich Shcherban.
According to open source , Shcherban has been working in the banking sector for about 18 years. He worked at Prominvestbank, Vladimirsky Bank, Yuzhkombank of Viktor Yanukovych Jr.’s auto racing friend Ruslan Tsyplakov. He also worked in the scheme banks “Apex” and “Standard”, as well as in Taskombank. Since mid-2018, Shcherban has been deputy chairman and acting. Chairman of the Board, and since August 2021 - heads the supervisory board of Alliance Bank. In July 2023, the Antimonopoly Committee allowed him to acquire more than 25% of the institution's shares.
Journalists claim that Shcherban is the godfather of Rostislav Shurma, whom they probably met about ten years ago during the structuring of a number of scheme transactions. “Failure to comply with guarantee conditions, chronic disregard regulations , especially regarding the level of risk per client, corruption scandals and fines for violating financial monitoring rules - collectively, all these factors should have long ago brought temporary administration to the bank,” the article says. However, the bank allegedly physically protects Shurm.
The authors note that Shurma has business interests in other Shcherban companies. “Firstly, we are talking about the gas production company Viva Exploration, which Shcherban formally owns together with geologist Sergei Dumenko through the Cypriot company IF Exploration Company Limited. According to reports , the company holds a license for geological exploration, including pilot industrial development with subsequent production of oil, natural gas and condensate at the Staromizunskaya area in the Ivano-Frankivsk region for a period of validity until 2033,” the material says.
The second interesting asset at Shcherban’s disposal, which may be backed by the deputy head of the President’s Office, is a recently acquired elevator in the city of Khorol in the Poltava region (Alliance Elevator LLC). “Despite its relatively small size and the need for reconstruction, Shcherban and Shurma consider this business as a start for greater integration into the agricultural industry, since the demand for storing grain and other agricultural products is only growing every year,” journalists say.
Also, a whole cluster of companies in which Shcherban invested are related to the IT business. “Shcherban is obviously going to create a multidisciplinary IT team that will be able to serve various areas. The firms mainly specialize in banking products, but also provide services to retail chains,” the text says. Shurma’s interest in the digitalization of many processes in the economy is known, the authors add. But his constant desire to “sit on” Deputy Prime Minister for Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov is also known. “And therefore Shcherban’s group is a good start for creating your own digital army,” the text says.
“All this versatility in business interests does not fit into the functionality of the chairman of the bank’s supervisory board, which has been storming for several months now. So here, either the Alliance is not a priority for Shcherban (which does not look like the truth), or investments in all these motley businesses are pure venture (portfolio investments, when the investor does not influence decision-making, but receives proportional to his share passive income), which, perhaps, is not even Shcherban himself,” the media specialists summarize.
