Family office of Gontareva in Cyprus: a new project amid the case about stabilization loans

Former head of the National Bank of Ukraine and former co-owner of the Investment Capital Ukraine (ICU) group Valeriya Gontareva may become a co-founder of a new investment business.

This is written in his blog by former editor of Economichna Pravda Serhiy Lyamets, citing his own sources.

"According to my sources, Valeriya Gontareva is opening a family office in Cyprus. Her partner in the new project may be former first deputy chair of the NBU Kateryna Rozhkova, who has also been spotted in Cyprus and who, according to rumors, owns real estate there. Rozhkova is a long-time friend and trusted person of the former head of the National Bank," he noted.

According to the prosecutor general, the author says, Gontareva became a subject of a joint investigation by the State Bureau of Investigations and the Office of the Prosecutor General. As part of this investigation, at the beginning of 2026 the Office of the Prosecutor General sent requests for mutual legal assistance to Cyprus, the BVI and the Netherlands. Investigators are checking her and other ICU co-owners for links with representatives of the Russian Federation and possible abuse of official position.

"It is not difficult to draw a line from stabilization loans to the article on causing losses to the state in especially large amounts, since during the 'bank collapse' roughly half of Ukrainian banks were liquidated," he writes.

According to the author, at different times other cases existed against Gontareva because she crossed the path of many influential people in Ukraine. The "purge" of the banking system she arranged resulted for Ukraine in the loss of a huge share of GDP for many years to come.

Recall that in the period from 2015 to 2017 she initiated the so-called "bank collapse," the victims of which were about 90 banks, thousands of businesses and millions of people. The most high-profile bankruptcies were the banks Delta, VAB, Nadra, Finance and Credit, Khreschatyk, Mykhailivskyi and Platinum. Because of the 'bank collapse' bank assets worth billions of dollars were sold off for peanuts, and the savings of people and companies disappeared. Gontareva blamed dishonest bankers; in response she and her political cover were accused of corruption, abuses and unethical behavior. However, criminal cases against Gontareva either were not opened or were quickly closed due to assistance from the authorities and friendly relations with influential people in the United States.

At the same time, the ICU group was close to President Petro Poroshenko, who appointed and supported Gontareva as head of the NBU. It was Makar Paseniuk who was involved in creating a 'blind' trust under Rothschild management, settling the Lipetsk factory case and Poroshenko’s Russian assets, negotiations to buy TV channels, energy deals and many others. Because of this, Makar Paseniuk was considered the 'financial shadow of Poroshenko.'

Lyamets cites court materials that claim Gontareva formally exited the list of ICU owners but preserved contacts with the group while she headed the NBU.

"There are reasonable grounds to believe that Gontareva V.O., while serving as Chair of the Management Board of the National Bank of Ukraine, abusing her official position, acting contrary to the interests of the service with the aim of obtaining unlawful benefits for herself and other natural and legal persons during the years 2014–2018 facilitated the unlawful issuance of stabilization loans to commercial banks," Lyamets quotes court materials in the case involving former and current ICU owners.

In particular, the author writes, Gontareva’s name has appeared in connection with her possible involvement in money laundering and embezzlement of budget funds. In this context ICU is mentioned as a structure associated with her.

"The pretrial investigation is being conducted with respect to the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine, which under the leadership of Gontareva V.O. during the years 2014–2018, by prior collusion with officials of the Investment Capital Ukraine group of companies (Investment Capital Ukraine or ICU), used their official position contrary to the interests of the service with the aim of obtaining unlawful benefits for themselves by creating conditions and ensuring the systemic functioning of large-scale schemes for embezzlement of budget funds and legalizing proceeds obtained by criminal means," the former editor of Economichna Pravda quotes court materials.

According to him, so far neither Gontareva nor Paseniuk nor other figures in the case have received suspicions. However, the author noted, their status can change at any moment because the case has not been closed despite significant efforts by ICU. In Lyamets' view, they may have been interested in inflating the scandal around Ruslan Kravchenko's resignation as prosecutor general.

"Has the investigation against ICU gone so far that it began to create a real threat to Gontareva, Poroshenko and the group they created to service the flows of government representatives called ICU, today formally registered to Makar Paseniuk and Kostiantyn Stetsenko? Could this, in turn, have been one of the reasons pressure at some point began to shift onto Kravchenko himself?.. Valeriya Gontareva and the people in whose interests she is opening a family office in Cyprus are absolutely not interested in the successful completion of the SBI and Prosecutor General’s Office investigation. They must be sure that Ukraine has dropped claims against Gontareva," the author said.

The author separately noted that he does not consider ICU powerful enough to 'bring down' Kravchenko by involving NABU and activists. In his opinion, they are probably one of many similar subjects of investigations controlled by the Prosecutor General’s Office. Since it was not possible to close the case against Kravchenko, there is some hope that the next prosecutor general may turn out to be more loyal.

Lyamets believes the criminal case threatens Gontareva’s, Paseniuk’s and Stetsenko’s future projects. In particular, the family office project in Cyprus.

Lyamets provides some facts:

- It concerns case No. 62025000000000954, opened in September 2025. Its figures are Gontareva, as well as current ICU co-owners Makar Paseniuk and Kostiantyn Stetsenko, and legal entities associated with them.

- A family office is a closed structure that professionally manages the finances of one family or several families. The office provides services in investing, taxes and money management. Beneficiaries’ names are usually not publicized.

- Court documents related to the investigation included Paseniuk, Stetsenko, Gontareva and numerous companies in Ukraine, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) that are part of the Investment Capital Ukraine (ICU) group. For example, among them are well-known ICU Trading, ICU Holdings, ICU Investment Management, CIS Opportunities Fund and JSC Bank Avangard (in total — more than a dozen structures). Prosecutors and investigators analyzed not only the Ukrainian 'facade' but also the offshore core of the group.

- In July 2026 it became known that the Prosecutor General’s Office’s international requests might have been withdrawn. According to the author’s sources, in February 2026 the prosecutor general, with the support of the head of the Department for Ensuring the Exercise of the Prosecutor General’s Powers in a criminal proceeding Aydin Khudiyev, ordered to remove from the investigation the entire group of prosecutors who were dealing, among other things, with international requests.

- "The Investment Capital Ukraine group of companies has a stable financial connection with financial companies of the aggressor country RF since its founding and continues it despite the full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine and the national and international sanctions imposed," reads the Pechersky Court decision of 11 December 2025. In particular, the investigation cites cooperation of Gontareva, Paseniuk and Stetsenko with representatives of Vneshtorgbank of Russia (VTB). The family of a top VTB executive once co-owned ICU. After the events of 2014 ICU became the owner of 35,02% of shares of Burger King Russia (Cyprus) Ltd, having bought the stake from the sanctioned VTB. It is also known that ICU cooperated with the sanctioned Russian oligarch Kostiantyn Hryhoryshyn. These facts may be objects of investigation or grounds for the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) to consider imposing sanctions against the group’s co-owners.