Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Kyiv City Council deputy from the Holos party, former head of the State Customs Service Maxim Niehoda publicly complained about the financial monitoring procedure applied to him by PrivatBank. According to the official, the bank asked him to confirm the source of funds for a routine transaction, even though the money had been sitting on his payroll account for several years. Niehoda noted that for the third year he has been receiving his salary to an account at PrivatBank, and with these same funds he buys Ministry of Finance war bonds, for which simplified financial monitoring is provided. Nevertheless the bank asked him for the source of funds that were already on his account in the same institution.
"A real life case of contemporary PEPs. I have been receiving a salary in the state-owned PrivatBank for already 3 years. Tell me, what reasonable creature is this in the first place?" — Maxim Niehoda wrote on his Facebook.
In the post, the former head of the customs service ironized by listing possible "culprits" of the situation, asking who exactly creates unnecessary burden for bank clients. Among the options he named:
a bank financial monitoring officer who suspected money laundering that has been sitting on the account for three years;
the bank's financial monitoring leadership that chooses to overdo precautions, although the NBU allows simplified procedures;
the National Bank, which, in his view, does not clearly prescribe normative requirements and does not sufficiently fine banks for excessive bureaucracy;
PrivatBank's management, which does not see a point in reducing the staff of financial monitoring;
the EU and the IMF, which, according to Niehoda, are interested in the fact of perpetual control itself, not its real outcome.
They sharpened the discussion about financial monitoring for PEPs
Niehoda's post added arguments to the long-running debate about how justified enhanced scrutiny of politically exposed persons in Ukraine is. Public figures, officials, and former officials have repeatedly complained that banks apply financial monitoring requirements even to routine operations, despite regulator explanations. The situation around the status of PEPs intensified against the backdrop of legislative changes in recent months, when parliament tried to review the duration and severity of control for such persons, and international partners of Ukraine insisted on the opposite approach.
However, readers on Facebook told Maxim Niehoda that his problems are not connected to the status of a politically exposed person, because PrivatBank's financial monitoring also reacts to ordinary Ukrainians.
Rules of financial monitoring for PEPs have been changed several times
Earlier, Informator reported that the Rada canceled lifelong financial monitoring for officials, limiting enhanced control for politically exposed persons 12 months after leaving office. This decision was meant to ease banking procedures for former officials who had remained under heightened scrutiny for years even after their terms ended.
We also wrote that the EU demanded to restore enhanced lifelong financial monitoring for PEPs, insisting that the president should not sign a law to soften controls. This confrontation between the Ukrainian parliament and European partners shows how contentious the issue of financial supervision over politically exposed persons remains.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Екс-очільник Митниці поскаржився на фінмоніторинг ПриватБанку". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Informator.
