A Kyiv Oblast Council Deputy Accused Bank Alliance of Ties to Firtash — Case Reached the Court

Holosiivskyi District Court of Kyiv 17 August 2026 ruled that information about Bank “Alliance” owner Oleksandr Sosis published in a petition on the Office of the President website was false. The petition’s author is Kyiv Oblast Council deputy and journalist Volodymyr Horkovenko, and the court ordered him to pay the plaintiff’s legal costs. The deputy claimed that the real owner of Alliance Bank is the sanctioned oligarch Dmytro Firtash and that the bank was allegedly involved in crimes. The court found that the petition’s assertions about nominal ownership of the bank do not correspond to reality. At the same time, the petition itself will remain available on the Office of the President website — it is not possible to delete or edit the text.

The lawsuit was heard by Holosiivskyi District Court of Kyiv in case No. 752/25585/24-c concerning recognition of information as false and protection of business reputation. Oleksandr Sosis sought a ruling that the information spread by Horkovenko on 19 September 2024 was false — namely, that he allegedly serves as a nominal holder of the bank’s assets in the interests of the sanctioned oligarch Dmytro Firtash, is involved in illegal activities, finances Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine, and that at the start of the full-scale invasion he fled the country and is hiding abroad.

Volodymyr Horkovenko is a Kyiv Oblast Council deputy from the European Solidarity party since 2020 and a journalist. He is a former head of the Main Department of Information Policy of President Petro Poroshenko’s Administration.

The essence of petition No. 22/234210-ep “On the application of sanctions against JSC ‘Bank Alliance’ and the bank’s officials” was a call for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to submit to the National Security and Defense Council a proposal to impose sanctions on the bank and a number of individuals. The petition’s author asserted that control over the bank is in fact exercised by the sanctioned Firtash, and that the citizens listed as official shareholders are only nominal holders of his assets. The text also listed accusations of the bank’s participation in a scheme to launder money to Russia, involvement in financing terrorists through payment services, cooperation with gambling companies, failure to fulfill banking guarantees to Naftogaz in the amount of 4 billion hryvnias, and a scheme to expropriate electricity from Ukrenergo worth over 1,11 billion hryvnias. Volodymyr Horkovenko demanded sanctions against:

the legal entity JSC “Bank Alliance”;

Oleksandr Sosis — the majority shareholder of Bank Alliance;

Pavlo Shcherban — a minority shareholder of Bank Alliance;

Yuliia Frolova — former chair of the management board of Bank Alliance;

Viktor Burkytsia — acting chair of the management board of Bank Alliance at the time the petition was published.

“The specified information has been covered repeatedly both in foreign and national media, but to date there has been no response to it either from law enforcement agencies or from the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine,” the petition text said.

The court found that as of the beginning of 2024 Sosis held 89,289006% of the total participation in the ownership structure of JSC “Bank Alliance” and was its key participant. The case materials contained no evidence that he acted as a nominal holder of assets in the interests of Firtash. A semantic-textual expert examination established that all three disputed assertions — about nominal ownership, involvement in illegal activity, and fleeing abroad — are presented in the petition as factual claims, not as value judgments.

Border service data examined by the court showed that the plaintiff regularly crossed the border of Ukraine from 2022 through 2024 in both directions, and that as of the petition’s publication date he had entered Ukraine through the Yahodyn checkpoint a few days earlier. The court also found no data indicating that Sosis was wanted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs or that there were criminal proceedings against him as a suspect.

“A private individual who disseminates information is obliged to ensure its accuracy,” the court noted, rejecting the defendant’s argument that the information was taken from open sources.

The court also rejected Horkovenko’s argument that he is an improper defendant, since he is explicitly named in the petition as its author. At the same time, the court denied the request to oblige the defendant to publish the court’s decision on his personal Facebook page, explaining that the disputed information was not spread via that social network and that any refutation should be made in the same way the information was disseminated.

The petition never gathered the required number of votes.

Despite the court’s finding that the stated facts were false, the petition itself will remain on the Office of the President website — the court did not require its removal. The reason is simple: the document never collected the required 25 thousand signatures within the three months prescribed by law, and therefore was never considered on the merits by either the president or the National Security and Defense Council. It managed to gather only 2719 signatures.

This decision is another episode in the prolonged confrontation over the ownership structure of Bank Alliance, in which Horkovenko repeatedly publicly insisted on the institution’s ties to the sanctioned oligarch. The court reached the opposite conclusion, relying on official National Bank data on the ownership structure and the absence of any documentary evidence of Firtash’s involvement with the bank. The decision was issued by Judge Serhii Chekulayev.

Previously, Informator reported that Firtash managed to avoid extradition to the United States thanks to a secret diplomatic status as an adviser to the permanent representation of Belarus in Vienna, which an Austrian court recognized. We also wrote that the SBU accused the oligarch of gas-related schemes that, by preliminary estimates, may have caused over 18 billion hryvnias in state losses over 2016–2022 years.