Scandalous Ukrainian ex-banker Denis Gorbunenko found himself connected to Russia

The former chairman of the board of the notorious Rodovid Bank, Denis Gorbunenko, is associated with the fintech company Dzing, which was recently subject to restrictions by the UK authorities due to suspicions of fraud.

Nadezhda Sklyarenko writes about this in the article “How the Dzing payment system can be connected with the Russian Federation, and what does Firtash Gorbunenko’s attorney have to do with it” on the RBC-Ukraine website.

In particular, as indicated in the article, on August 1, 2024, the London company Union Gf UK Ltd, owned by Denis Gorbunenko, reported that Gorbunenko’s share in it had decreased to 90%, and he transferred 10% to DekibaTrading FZE from the United Arab Emirates. As it turns out, Dekiba Trading FZE is a co-owner of the notorious British company Dzing Finance Ltd. By DzingFinance Ltd. in October 2023 and March 2024, the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) imposed restrictions, saying almost one in five payments it received were linked to fraudulent schemes. The founder and director of Dzing was Russian Mikhail Nadel. In 2011, he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 16 years in prison by a Kyrgyz court for fraud and money laundering at AsiaUniversal Bank. And the key shareholder of Dzing is Tatyana Orlova, a Russian woman with a Norwegian passport, the ex-wife of Russian billionaire Vitaly Orlov.

As journalists found out, the representative of Dekiba Trading FZE is a citizen of Ukraine Evgeniy Shapka. Since 2019, he has held the position of director of the Kyiv company Norlendinvest, which on paper is owned by British citizen Robert Alan Johnson, who is associated with Gorbunenko. In particular, the connection with Gorbunenko is confirmed by the fact that Johnson was the chairman of the supervisory board of the scandalous Ukrainian bank Sich, when the National Bank recognized Gorbunenko as its de facto controller. Gorbunenko himself, back in 2009, after the collapse of Rodovid Bank, moved to London and became a confidant of the oligarch Dmitry Firtash, whose extradition from Austria the US authorities are seeking.

According to the Trademo service, Dekiba Trading FZE delivered at least two shipments of ilmenite concentrate from Africa to Russia to the Kit company in 2021 in the amount of $1.4 million. The country of origin of the cargo was indicated as Mozambique (it is noteworthy that at one time the owner of the Kremlin-funded Wagner PMC Yevgeny Prigozhin included this country in his sphere of interests). And the cargo could have been intended for VSMPO-Avisma, a company controlled by the Rostec state corporation, the largest titanium producer in Russia, which is on the US sanctions list. The titanium it produces is widely used in the production of cruise missiles, in particular the X-101. It is precisely this kind of missile, as is known, that Russian terrorists launched at the Okhmatdyt children's hospital.