Who is behind Alliance Bank

A small bank against which the state is powerless. What does Kolomoisky have to do with this?

Now you'll go nuts! From time to time, subscribers send me interesting information about which for some reason they don’t say anything at the Unified Telethon. For example, about a small Ukrainian bank - Alliance. The bank is really small, but was able to appear in various interesting stories. For example, this bank is included in the plunder scheme for more than 700 million UAH. funds from Ukrenergo.

This scheme was investigated by NABU.

The gist of the story is this. In the fall of 2021, Alliance Bank issued a bank guarantee to United Energy, which is part of the orbit of oligarch Kolomoisky. The bank guarantee was for the purchase of electricity or any other trade transactions. As a general rule, this means that if the buyer is unable to pay for the goods, the bank will do it for him. At least, this is how this system works in the world and in Ukraine. But in Ukraine, everything goes the other way, when they don’t plan to pay the money, but want to steal from a state-owned company.

The investigation showed that Alliance issued guarantees to United Energy for almost UAH 2 billion, which critically exceeded the credit risks per client. But that was only half the story. When United Energy did not pay Ukrenergo for the supplied electricity in March 2022, Alliance Bank refused to answer for its obligations, citing formalities. As a result, a situation arose where Ukrenergo (and in fact the state of Ukraine) suffered losses (various estimates range from UAH 700 million to UAH 1.7 billion, depending on whether penalties and fines, as well as other payments, are taken into account).

On January 11 of this year, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) announced the exposure of the Ukrenergo electricity takeover scheme and announced suspicion to four individuals. The defendants were officials of Ukrenergo, who sold electricity to an unreliable counterparty, the head of the bank, as well as the buyer, United Energy.

Investigators found that, according to his official duties, the Ukrenergo employee had to stop the sale when United Energy consumed electricity without paying. He had to transfer the company to a “pre-default” state, and then to a “default” state so that it could not resell electricity. But for some reason this did not happen, because who would interfere with the man whose money and TV channel made Zelensky president in 2019. Let me remind you once again that this is a company that the media and market participants associate with the interests of Igor Kolomoisky, because first of all it supplied resources to enterprises controlled by him, as Business Censor wrote about in 2020.

And this is where the fun begins with the bank. In criminal proceedings, NABU put the chairman of the board of Alliance Bank, Yulia Frolova, on the international wanted list. After all, according to investigators, she exceeded her authority by issuing an excessive guarantee. Which resulted in losses to the state. Market players agree with this conclusion and point to the pattern. But it was not possible to detain Frolova because she is hiding abroad. Is anyone surprised? At the same time, Ukrenergo filed a commercial claim against Alliance Bank for the return of money. And here the figure of UAH 1.2 billion already appears, since we are talking about additional accrued penalties. At the same time, the Supreme Court of Ukraine recently ruled that in cases of bank guarantees, payments must be made unconditionally. So the fate of this payment is actually determined: Alliance Bank will have to settle accounts with the state, as well as be held liable under criminal charges.

But that's not all about this “wonderful” bank.

Alliance Bank was able to get into another corruption scandal, also related to anti-corruption authorities. The fact is that in economic and criminal proceedings the interests of Alliance Bank are protected by the well-known Ukrainian law firm Miller. So, one of Miller’s lawyers, Alexey Nosov, was accused of attempting to give a $200,000 bribe in the interests of Alliance Bank in order to change jurisdiction. Alliance Bank wanted to transfer the case to another body, with which they had agreed in advance, and thus evade responsibility. This is at its best. In the worst case scenario, the chairman of the board, Frolova, would simply not be included in the register of corrupt officials, which means she would have fewer reputational problems if she were found guilty. As one politician said, “Appreciate the beauty of the game.” They planned to give this bribe to NABU detectives and SAPO prosecutors, but they did not take it and a scandal and another case broke out. I wonder if the lawyers already had another law enforcement agency in mind that would help “correctly” interpret the legislation in favor of the bank? Something tells me that the name of the service to which President Zelensky wanted to transfer all cases of corruption under the slogan of strengthening the fight against that very corruption comes to mind.

Let's be honest, it is doubtful that this operation could have been carried out without the knowledge of the management of Alliance Bank, although the latter actively denies its involvement. Who will believe that lawyer Alexey Nosov not only at his own peril and risk independently decided to achieve the transfer of the case to another body, he himself decided to negotiate this and decided to give his own money as a bribe? Altruistic lawyer. Everything for the client. Even your money.

But the most interesting thing in this whole story is that the fact of theft from Ukrenergo is far from the only one in the “track record” of the Alliance. It turns out that the refusal to pay state-owned companies under bank guarantees has become a matter of routine at the bank: both the Ministry of Defense and Naftogaz are involved. What’s new is that the bank owes Ukrgazvydobuvannya about UAH 1 billion under bank guarantees issued already in 2022. That is, without paying off Ukrenergo, it has already made money from Ukrgazvydobuvannya. All these cases have been pending in the courts for years, and the state does not receive multi-billion dollar payments. I wonder who is behind this bank if it ignores the decision of the Supreme Court of Ukraine and its lawyer so calmly and boldly offers a bribe to anti-corruption detectives and prosecutors? I think it's worth taking a closer look at it, which I will do. It’s also worth recalling that there is even a petition to impose sanctions on this bank. And apparently it needs to be signed so that the OP will take up this issue. Because they don’t want to do it themselves.