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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Union Standard Bank Case: Yevhen Dziuba and Denys Derkach Laundered Hundreds of Millions, Framing Friedrich Pollak
Native of Donbas Yevhen Dziuba and his loyal associate Denys Derkach managed to launder hundreds of millions with impunity and walk away unscathed, notes First Truth&Transparency Committee columnist Viktor Boyko. The GPU has only now returned to the old case. Populism by Yuriy Lutsenko? Fine, but even populism can sometimes do good. If the case is brought to a logical conclusion, Yevhen Dziuba could face up to seven years in prison, and Denys Derkach — three to five years.
It seems a fat period has been put on the story of yet another bank of the Ukrainian mafia. But sorting out who stood behind it and fed off the schemes built on it will likely take a very long time. Of course, if the authorities even want to dig deeper.
Kurchenko’s Lawyer Steps Onto the Stage
The National Police of Odesa region uncovered the theft of funds at Union Standard Bank (also USB Bank and Union Standard Bank). Law enforcement seized the financial documentation of the institution and soon detained an adviser to the bank’s chairman and the chief managing director. Earlier media reported that top managers had illegally appropriated depositors’ funds amounting to more than 100 million hryvnias.
Earlier, journalists from First Truth&Transparency Committee noted that a number of Dnipro-registered media outlets (the location is not accidental; why — will become clear a bit later) claimed that the fraud was directly orchestrated by the institution’s current executives Petro Demeter and Friedrich Pollak. However, as far as is known, these gentlemen are not officially subjects of the case (although other sources assert that these guys are now in pretrial detention, and a fixer is trying to get them out of the cell).
According to the press service of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Odesa region, the court chose pretrial detention with the possibility of bail of 40 million hryvnias each for the suspects.
At the same time, sources in the SBU report that the detainees tried to “solve the issue” of reducing the bail amount in the Odesa Court of Appeal and leave pretrial detention using depositors’ money. Methods for solving such issues have persisted since Viktor Yanukovych’s rule — a bribe from the “right” lawyer.
The suspects’ lawyer is Denys Buhai. A notorious “fixer” of such judicial matters in Ukraine, he also served as chairman of the supervisory board of the late Brokbiznesbank, and is known as the chief lawyer of fugitive businessman Serhiy Kurchenko, who was part of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych’s inner circle.
Denys Buhai
In March 2014, Buhai was accused of complicity in Kurchenko’s crimes. The Prosecutor General’s Office claimed Kurchenko laundered funds, part of which financed Berkut, titushky and other criminal groups intended to neutralize Maidan. On 29 March, Holosiivskyi District Court of Kyiv chose pretrial detention for Buhai or bail of 140 million hryvnias. Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Holomsha (later dismissed under lustration, — Ed.) noted that Buhai was involved in financing unlawful measures against peaceful citizens.
One of the main charges in the “Kurchenko case” was the theft of 2 billion hryvnias provided by the National Bank as part of refinancing of Brokbiznesbank and Real Bank, overseen by Buhai. Bank management decided to loan affiliated enterprises. As the investigation found, most assets were transferred to Kurchenko’s accounts, which led to the bank’s bankruptcy.
Another scandal in which Buhai figures is the attempted seizure of Ukrainian gas assets of Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg. Buhai’s firm then serviced the Ukrainian subsidiary — HAZEX Ukraine LLC, which held all the Russian oligarch’s shares in the regional gas companies. Ultimately, HAZEX’s top manager Vitaliy Demyanyuk and Denys Buhai attempted, without the shareholders’ knowledge, to change the owner of the gas business.
Now Denys Buhai presents himself as an authorized attorney handling matters with the Prosecutor General’s Office.
The appearance of Kurchenko’s “young oligarch” lawyer in the Union Standard Bank case could only be explained if he were a good lawyer with great connections—if the shadow of the ‘puppet-chairman’ schemes of Yanukovych’s Family had not previously fallen over the bank. We will return to that nuance later. Now a bit more on what brought the authorities’ wrath down on this bank.
Suspicious Turnover of Cash in a Very Short Time
The details of the plundering of Union Standard Bank were vividly described back in October 5 in an article on Ekonomichna Pravda by the National Bank’s Department of Banking Supervision director Kateryna Rozhkova. To refresh the memory, we quote that text with some omissions:
The National Bank’s board urgently decides to withdraw Union Standard Bank from the market.
On Saturday, the Deposit Guarantee Fund enters the bank. Why the rush?
On 24 September we classified the bank as problematic. The reason sounds formal — “due to increased information security risks.” But behind that wording there are in fact many interesting facts.
For example — a complaint from Georgia’s Ministry of Energy about failure to fulfill a guarantee of 1 million dollars provided by Strait Oil and Gas.
Union Standard Bank’s explanation was unique — “unknown persons, having unauthorizedly interfered with the operation of the electronic computing machine (computer) located at PJSC USB BANK at the address: Odesa, Hymnazychna St., 21, committed criminal actions regarding issuance of a bank guarantee on behalf of PJSC USB BANK through the S.W.I.F.T. system.”
So, in the bank someone unknown approached a computer and issued guarantees for a million dollars?
These same “unknown persons” used the bank’s computers to confirm guarantees on 14 September 2014, 19 March and 6 April 2015.
The National Bank learned of these facts at the end of summer 2015 and began its inspection.
The result of checking the security gaps was recognition of the bank as problematic and the appointment of an NBU curator.
Usually a problematic bank has 180 days to fix the situation. In our case, it took a week to go from problematic to insolvent. What went wrong?
This is almost a detective story.
We had the sense of dealing with two different banks. On one hand, management declared retail development, creation of new products, and work to disclose the ultimate beneficiary. But when the bank turned its other face — we saw a completely different picture.
So, 29 September. 57% of Union Standard Bank’s cash — 108 million hryvnias — was concentrated in the branch on Artema St., 50.
30 September. 9:00. Employees of the NBU Main Directorate in Kyiv and Kyiv region come to Artema St. to inspect branches. For an hour and a half they are not let into the cash offices.
10:30. During that hour and a half 50 million hryvnias were sent from the Artema branch of Union Standard Bank to Odesa, another 27 million to Lviv. In Kyiv the check showed a shortage of 410 thousand hryvnias. Agree, not a small discrepancy.
Noon. NBU employees in Odesa and Lviv check Union Standard Bank cash desks. There is no money.
17:11. According to transaction records, 47 million hryvnias left Odesa for Kharkiv, and from Kharkiv 12 million immediately “moved” to Dnipropetrovsk.
By the way, the Kharkiv branch at Lenina Ave. 41/43, from which those 12 million hryvnias left, NBU employees could not find. As with the money.
1 October. The NBU asks Union Standard Bank to consolidate funds in Lviv, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk by 2 October.
2 October. The National Bank’s demands were not met.
Friday. Evening. The National Bank’s board decides to withdraw Union Standard Bank from the market.
VIDEO
http://ntn.ua/ru/products/programs/svidok/news/2014/11/14/15100
The current owners blamed the theft on the previous ones. But as noted above, the money finally disappeared only a month ago. Who pocketed it — we hope the investigation will find out. We will now turn to the oddities in the history of this bank.
Criminal “Authorities,” Prosecutorial “Shield” and Criminal Cases
The financial institution that ended its existence this year under the name Union Standard Bank was founded in Dnipropetrovsk in distant 1994. Back then it was called Vidergeburt; three years later it was renamed to the more palatable Technobank. In 2004 it became Finansovyy Soyuz Bank, or, abbreviated, FSB.
This change of signage followed a corporate conflict among shareholders. Bank president and at the time main formal owner Dmytro Fomenko stated that a former co-owner named Chechenev was attempting fraudulently to take 4,5 million hryvnias from the bank, while the latter claimed those 4,5 million were his capital contribution to then-Technobank. But it seems that after the institution became FSB and changed its de jure shareholders, Chechenev was left empty-handed.
Dmytro Fomenko
Notably: it is now rarely mentioned, but this many-faced bank was originally linked to Dnipropetrovsk mid-level oligarch Harekin Arutyunov. This person — born in 1990 — was, it is claimed, once a partner of the influential criminal “authority” Narik (real name — Oleksandr Petrovskiy). Later he quit outright criminality and came under the wing of then-powerful Pavlo Lazarenko; after Lazarenko fled the country he began cooperating with Yuliya Tymoshenko. In 2001 he joined the Batkivshchyna party, in 2002 he became a Dnipropetrovsk city council deputy for that party, and in 2007 he entered parliament under the banner of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.
Parliamentary immunity came in handy for Arutyunov, because already in 2008 FSB became the subject of an SBU investigation.
In 31 October that year, following an operational check of FSB, an arrest was imposed on funds in the amount of 35 million hryvnias, which were part of an illegal operation to return fictitious VAT, and had passed through Prominvestbank. The joint check was conducted by the SBU and State Financial Monitoring under the personal control of acting SBU chairman Valentyn Nalyvaichenko.
“FSB bank was repeatedly inspected by the Prosecutor General’s Office, State Financial Monitoring and the Interior Ministry during 2007–2008 years for operations that fall under Ukraine’s anti-money laundering laws. The results of almost all checks confirm the bank’s violations of the aforementioned legislation,” a source at the NBU asserted.
According to the Market Infrastructure Agency, then 60% of shares of CJSC Finansovyy Soyuz Bank (FSB) belonged to legal entities controlled at the time by People’s Deputy of Ukraine Harekin Arutyunov. Minority shares were held by supervisory board chairman Dmytro Fomenko and former SBU head in Dnipropetrovsk region Ivan Stupak. Previously a package of FSB shares belonged to former Dnipropetrovsk regional prosecutor Volodymyr Shuba, who died under unclear circumstances shortly before the events described.
Some time later, to shed the stigma of that “fame,” FSB was renamed Yekaterynoslav Commercial Bank. But for now we will briefly stop at a couple of landmark events in the bank’s fate that occurred in 2008.
In 27 February 2008, when the investigation into the bank was in full swing, an explosion occurred near the car into which FSB chairman Dmytro Fomenko was about to get. As a result of the incident the banker received minor injuries.
“The only argument explaining what happened is the chain of events that have occurred around the bank over the past four months,” Fomenko said a week after the explosion. He claimed that after refusing to cooperate and meet the terms of a curator from a Donetsk bank — People’s Deputy (at the time) Oleksandr Shepelev — FSB began to experience pressure, including allegedly from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
A strange story emerged. The bank’s leader, who at the time was in the orbit of People’s Deputy from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc Arutyunov, was allegedly targeted for assassination by banker Shepelev, then functioning as Yulia Volodymyrivna’s “wallet” (by the way, in 2008 she flew to Moscow on Shepelev’s private plane for the ill-fated gas negotiations with Putin).
A redistribution of spheres of political or economic influence? A smokescreen for investigators? Frankly, we have no explanation for what happened. So here and below we will avoid interpretations, but try to set out the facts clearly.
The fact is this: in 2008, when Fomenko was bombed and the criminal case concerning his bank was being investigated, some direct and indirect FSB shareholders decided to inject their media assets into the holding of a Kyiv magnate. The holding is known as UMH, and the magnate is Borys Lozhkin.
Lozhkin’s and Kurchenko’s “Ears”
By the end of 2008, according to the NBU report, the nominal shareholders of then-CJSC Finansovyy Soyuz Bank were: insurance company Soyuz (18,99%), Dmytro Fomenko (directly — 36,86%, indirectly — 21,38%), Yuliya Sosedka (directly — 17,16%, indirectly — 38,61%), Olena Sosedka-Mishalova (directly — 19,61%, indirectly — 36,16%), Olena Fomenko (directly — 2,38% of shares, indirectly — 36,85%).
The online edition Status wrote that in 2001 Dmytro Fomenko founded the industrial-financial group Finansovyy Soyuz, which included enterprises in coal, metallurgy, agro-industry, construction and food sectors. His wife Olena allegedly engaged in charitable activities. Nothing is known about Yuliya Sosedka, but her sister Olena — wife of Viacheslav Mishalov, who is the son of Dmytro Mishalov — co-owner of the Master group. Despite his young age (born 24 September 1985), Viacheslav is co-owner of the portal and advertising internet agency mi6.com.ua, payment system UkrMoney.com, internet portal I.UA, electronic bank Limonex.com, Dnipro site Gorod.dp.ua and other portals and providers (the intrigues around that deal were painted in detail by Delova Stolitsa newspaper).
In September 2008 those and other assets not listed here for brevity became part of Borys Lozhkin’s Ukrainian Media Holding. Coincidence? Quite possible.
In July of the following 2009, a report appeared that Dmytro Fomenko allegedly sold all his 47,4866% of CJSC Finansovyy Soyuz Bank shares to certain resident legal entities. Thus each nominal bank shareholder’s stake became less than 10%, which, according to the law, allows a financial institution not to “expose” its owners. Soon the bank became Yekaterynoslav Commercial Bank. We dare to assume that the real owners of FSB did not change, but went into the shadows using a legal loophole.
Who is Yevhen Dziuba?
A few years later, shortly before the tragic events of the Revolution of Dignity, in autumn 2013 our bank again surfaced in the information space. In February it became known that Dmytro Fomenko had sold Yekaterynoslav Financial Bank (Isn’t that odd? After all, de jure he had already sold this bank under a different name four years earlier). The buyer was reportedly a young financier (then 31 years old) of Donetsk origin, Yevhen Dziuba.
Yevhen Dziuba
In mid-March 2013 the bank was renamed Union Standard Bank and moved its central office from Dnipropetrovsk to Odesa, from which it soon moved to the capital Kyiv at Artema St., 50.
Notably, throughout 2010 Yevhen Dziuba worked as an adviser to the chairman of the board of the Yanukovych-servicing Radical Bank, and from 2012 until the moment of the USB “purchase” he was listed as a consultant to PJSC Yekaterynoslav Commercial Bank, which soon became Union Standard Bank. That is, it is easy to assume the bank was prepared for acquisition by the “Family” at least a year before it happened.
Interestingly, around the same period, in the second half of 2013 the Ukrainian Media Holding of Borys Lozhkin was purchased by East European Fuel and Energy Company of Serhiy Kurchenko, the puppet-chairman of Yanukovych’s “Family.” In doing so, the media assets of the bank’s former (or perhaps not entirely former?) owners were absorbed.
There are data that Yevhen Dziuba laundered at least 450 million hryvnias for Yanukovych’s Family. Dziuba himself says he worked with Kurchenko and the “Family” not for long, and naturally — strictly within the law. Nevertheless, Mr. Lutsenko is unlikely to buy those stories. We can only hope, at least.
As already noted, a year after the regime’s fall the bank’s money was emptied out clean. Right under the noses of financial regulators. Coincidence? Unlike Kremlin propagandists, we will not invent. Frankly: we don’t know. Although perhaps something will soon come to light. So...
fttc.com.ua
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Дело Юнион Стандард Банк: Евгений Дзюба и Денис Деркач отмыли сотни миллионов, подставив Фридриха Поллака". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.
