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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The Deposit Guarantee Fund's debt for loans from the NBU and the Ministry of Finance amounts to 61,3 billion UAH. At the same time, the DGF does not use the legal right given to it to claim damages from the bank's owners and management who brought the financial institution to insolvency.
The Deposit Guarantee Fund's debt to the NBU and the Ministry of Finance amounts to 61,3 billion UAH. At the same time, the DGF does not use the legal right given to it to claim damages from the bank's owners and management who brought the financial institution to insolvency.
According to the Law of Ukraine “On Deposit Guarantee for Individuals” among the sources of financing for the DGF, the biggest share is the contributions that all banks regularly pay to the Fund. From these contributions the Fund should have compensated depositors of the burnt bank with guaranteed deposits up to 200 thousand UAH. However, this system has not been able to sustain the burden in recent years: 66 banks were recognized as insolvent. According to the Fund, last year banks collected 3,48 billion UAH in contributions. But depositors had to receive 50,3 billion UAH over the year. Under these conditions the DGF borrows money from the NBU and the Ministry of Finance. As of today, the debt to the first is 9,7 billion UAH, to the second the Fund owes 51,6 billion UAH.
The DGF has the right to compensate the funds paid to depositors from the bank’s assets. At the same time, in 2015 year, the DGF sold banks’ property for only 1 billion UAH. In addition, the appraised value of such property is usually many times lower than the bank’s debts. This phenomenon is called “insufficiency of the bank’s assets.” Because of this insufficiency, in most cases there are not enough funds to compensate all queues – and in particular the funds spent by the Fund are not reimbursed.
The procedure for the DGF’s actions in case of asset insufficiency in a bank is regulated by part 5 article 52 of the Law of Ukraine “On Deposit Guarantee for Individuals.” According to the law, the DGF appeals to a person connected with the bank whose actions or inaction caused the damage or who benefited from the bank’s bankruptcy, and demands reimbursement. Such persons are: the bank’s executives, owners of a significant stake (shareholders with 10% or more), affiliated persons of the bank and their executives and owners of significant stakes, as well as close relatives of the above persons. If they refuse, the Fund files a lawsuit for recovery.
However, after two years of mass liquidation of insolvent banks, not a single owner of such a bank has had money recovered by the Fund in accordance with this provision of the law.
The absence of positive court practice for the DGF is explained by its director Konstantin Vorushilin by the fact that the Fund cannot determine what damages the owners and bankers caused to the financial institutions, so for now it is engaged in other tasks: “We can only determine the amount of the damage when we form the liquidation mass, assess it, form it, sell it – that is the amount of damage. For me, the most acute problem right now is to recover those assets that were withdrawn from banks.”
Meanwhile, there is already a court precedent for establishing the owner’s guilt in insolvency and for recovering the damages from the owner to the depositor. In the case of VAB Bank, a number of civil suits were filed individually against the owner of the bank – Oleg Bakhmatyuk. One such court decision for about 10 million UAH was won on 7 April 2016. At the depositor’s request, in order to identify the owner’s fault in the bank’s insolvency, the court requested from the NBU a stop list of VAB to the category of problem and insolvent banks, together with justifications, copies of notes and explanations, information about the curator and copies of their reports. According to the lawyer Arsen Marinushkin, who led the case in court, it is in these documents that the full evidence of the owner’s inaction is collected. Relying on the information recorded in these documents, the court granted the claims in full.
Details on how bankers siphon money from bankrupt banks — read here.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Фонд гарантування вкладів оплачує банкрутство банків мільярдами з кишень громадян, а не банкірів". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Bihus.Info.
