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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine is conducting searches at the office of the supervisory board of "Sense Bank," including at the chair of the supervisory board, Mykola Hladyshchenko. Investigative actions are taking place 19 August after the supervisory board chair voluntarily stepped aside in May amid the scandal over the Mindich tapes.
The searches were reported by sources for the publication "Economic Truth" (Ekonomichna Pravda). The bank’s press service, at the time this news was published, could neither confirm nor deny that investigative actions were underway.
Details of the case
According to the investigation’s version, JSC «Sense Bank» may have been used as a channel to transfer part of the funds for bail for Herman Halushchenko. Certain former and current bank officials are linked by investigators to organizing these operations and possibly evading financial monitoring. According to the motion’s materials, unidentified persons from the Office of the President allegedly instructed then-deputy head of the OP Iryna Mudra to bring the bank under the Office of the President’s control. Subsequently, according to the investigation’s version, she was to organize the raising of funds to post 150 million UAH in bail for Halushchenko. The case mentions Sense Bank’s CEO O. V. Stupak, former supervisory board chair M. I. Hladyshchenko, and head of the Department of Financial and Currency Monitoring L. P. Snihur. The investigation reports contacts of these persons, or some of them, with Iryna Mudra, Maksym Mykytas, V. P. Yelizarov, and M. V. Tarkovskyi. The subject of their conversations, according to the motion’s materials, was non-cash transfers via "Sense Bank" that could later have been used to post the bail.
It is worth adding that Hladyshchenko is a board member of "Ukrfinzhytlo." He joined Sense Bank’s supervisory board as an independent member, i.e., not a state representative. Before his appointment, the National Bank asked him for additional assurances of his independence. Not all participants in the process agreed with Hladyshchenko’s selection for the position. Deputy Finance Minister Yurii Drahanchuk wrote a dissenting opinion about the candidate, noting that he was not suitable for the position due to limited experience. The EBRD representative on the nomination committee, in turn, noted that Hladyshchenko might have a conflict of interest because he had worked at a partner company of Sense Bank.
What the Mindich tape transcriptions showed
As stated in the UtroP (UP)–published transcriptions of the "Mindich tapes," figures in NABU’s investigation discussed appointing members of Sense Bank’s supervisory board even before the government and the National Bank approved the relevant decision. At the same time, the figures discussed their own "quotas" on the board of a state bank, which would have given them control over the institution’s decisions.
Thus, 9 May 2025, a person identified by the investigation as a former advisor to Sense Bank’s supervisory board and, likely, the "watcher" of the institution, Vasyl Vesely, discussed appointments to the bank’s supervisory board with Oleksandr Tsukerman, a figure in the "Midas" case. 40 days after that conversation, the Cabinet of Ministers appointed the very persons these interlocutors had discussed to the supervisory board.
Why the scandal threatens the bank’s privatization
The recordings captured discussion of the supervisory board’s composition even before its official appointment in June 2025, and that was the reason several state bodies initiated checks. The situation complicates matters for Sense Bank because the institution is preparing for privatization, and any managerial or corruption scandal could reduce its attractiveness to potential investors ahead of the sale.
Earlier, Informator reported that the National Bank is reviewing Sense Bank’s management — the NBU opened administrative proceedings to assess the qualifications of the CEO and the supervisory board chair. NBU Governor Andriy Pyshnyi explained that the review is related to facts uncovered during a forensic study, which established the existence of a hidden system of bank management under previous shareholders.
We also wrote that the State Financial Monitoring Service handed law enforcement agencies materials on suspicious transactions by Sense Bank’s clients totaling 32 billion UAH. According to the head of the service, Filip Pronin, the bank’s clients became subjects of nearly 600 aggregated reports for the period from 2025 through May 2026.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "НАБУ проводить обшуки у голови Сенс Банку — що відомо про справу". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Informator.
