Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Ihor Doroshenko deliberately withdrew funds from Mykhailivskyi Bank before bankruptcy — lawyer
Shortly before Mykhailivskyi Bank’s bankruptcy, its managers helped large depositors withdraw deposits that exceeded the state-guaranteed threshold of 200 thousand UAH to related companies Pleiada and Fagor.
To depositors who agreed to this scheme, Mykhailivskyi Bank’s managers gave personal guarantees of repayment, said Arsen Marynushkin, a lawyer and deputy head of the organization Public Bank Control, who represents the insolvent bank’s clients in court.
“Depositors who, before the temporary administration was introduced, trusted the management and, in order to save their savings, transferred deposits of 200+ to the accounts of Pleiada LLC and Fagor LLC,” Marynushkin said.
Now the lawyers for the harmed depositors of Mykhailivskyi Bank are developing a legal mechanism to recover their losses directly from the bank’s former head, Ihor Doroshenko.
His actions indicate that the bank’s chairman Ihor Doroshenko and its shareholder Viktor Polishchuk knew about the impending bankruptcy and were preparing for it. Yet in all their public statements they insist they tried to save the financial institution and were implementing a rehabilitation program coordinated with the National Bank.
Earlier, the head of the Deposit Guarantee Fund, Kostiantyn Vorushylin, said that the managers and shareholders of Mykhailivskyi Bank were embezzling the financial institution shortly before it was declared insolvent and a temporary administration was imposed.
“Substituting collateral is theft, scheme-based sales are also theft. Because when a bank becomes insolvent, it has no money. Only ledger entries on the balance sheet,” Vorushylin said, commenting on Mykhailivskyi Bank’s disputed transactions with financial and factoring companies that led to the bank’s insolvency.
Vorushylin explained that the “cleaning out” of banks by management and shareholders before they are declared insolvent is a common market practice, and that the managers and shareholders of bankrupt banks avoid liability thanks to legislative gaps.
As is known, on the night before the temporary administration was introduced, the bank’s management quickly transferred money from the accounts of the financial companies Investment and Settlement Center and Credit-Investment Center to the personal accounts opened at Mykhailivskyi Bank. Depositors’ funds went to the KIC and ISC accounts disguised as state-guaranteed deposits; Mykhailivskyi Bank accepted them at huge interest rates — up to 27 percent per year. As a result of the transfers from KIC and ISC accounts to accounts in Mykhailivskyi Bank, its obligations to individuals increased overnight by more than 1,2 billion UAH.
At the same time, Mykhailivskyi Bank’s loan portfolio was sold to factoring companies that, according to media reports, are directly connected to the bank’s shareholder Viktor Polishchuk and chairman Ihor Doroshenko. Although in one interview Polishchuk insisted that the loans were transferred to another financial institution — Platinum Bank.
Shortly before Mykhailivskyi Bank was declared insolvent, its shareholder Viktor Polishchuk substituted and withdrew collateral, which significantly worsened the bank’s financial position.
The fraudulent scheme carried out by the shareholders and management of Mykhailivskyi Bank led to mass protests by deceived depositors. Under their pressure, the state was forced to decide to provide additional compensation from the Deposit Guarantee Fund for dubious deposits in nonbank financial companies totaling more than one billion hryvnias. Amendments to legislation were quickly introduced to do this. Nevertheless, many deposit agreements remain disputed, and depositors cannot recover their money.
National Bank chair Valeria Hontareva repeatedly called Mykhailivskyi Bank’s managers and shareholders fraudsters in her remarks and threatened them with prosecution.
Now Polishchuk and Doroshenko are trying to shift all the blame for Mykhailivskyi Bank’s bankruptcy and depositors’ problems in recovering the “scheme” deposits onto the NBU and the DGF.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Ігор Дорошенко умисно виводив гроші з банку «Михайлівський» перед банкрутством — адвокат". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.