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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Banks have begun blocking the posting of bail under VAKS decisions: the NBU talks about reputational risks.
Banks have started blocking payments to the accounts of the High Anti-Corruption Court for posting bail. Participants in high-profile cases say that because of these decisions, VAKS’s alternative to detention cannot practically be fulfilled.
Attorney and former SAP prosecutor Stanislav Bronevytsky disclosed correspondence with support from monobank and a video attempting to transfer an arbitrary amount to the VAKS account as bail. The bank’s response turned out to be unambiguous: such a payment cannot be made with the specified details. Monobank explained that payments related to posting bail are not carried out.
Bronevytsky called the situation a dangerous precedent. If the court has defined bail as an alternative to arrest, but the bank physically prevents its payment, then the preventive measure effectively remains only on paper. The person continues to be in pre-trial detention, and pressure to obtain testimonies, strike a deal with the investigation, or “cooperate” may become the only practical option.
“Call things by their proper names — captivity,” Bronevytsky wrote.
Separately, he emphasized possible appeals to the European Court of Human Rights and further compensation, which, if the corresponding decisions are made, will be paid from the state budget.
The same problem occurred with the defendants in the “Forrest Gump” case. 11 In September, VAKS set Vadym Stolár’s bail at 300 million UAH without taking him into custody. At the same time, Irina Mudra could not make the corresponding payment.
According to case participants, banks block such operations at the level of financial monitoring. Funds transferred to the court’s account as bail are classified as high risk. In private conversations, bankers refer to a National Bank recommendation not to conduct such payments precisely in these cases.
The NBU denies manual interference. They say that about 15 banks have already refused to conduct such payments, and therefore the version that the regulator called each of them is “absurd.” The National Bank explains the situation as a reputational risk for banks.
A similar issue was discussed in September with the former head of the supervisory board of state-owned Sense Bank, Mykola Hladyschenko, 17–18. VAKS set him bail at 7 million UAH and gave five business days to post it. He said the funds were available, as were documents proving their origin. However, banks blocked payments if the designation indicated the word “bail.”
Hladyschenko noted that three weeks earlier such transfers went much more easily. Now he sees signs of “manual regulation” and also contemplates appealing to the ECHR.
Sense Bank itself was placed under an off-schedule check by the NBU in August precisely on bail and financial monitoring issues. After that, the bank removed the head of financial monitoring.
Andriy Pyshny made an appeal to the Cabinet of Ministers to dismiss the bank’s head, Oleksiy Stupak. Stupak and Hladyschenko are accused of channeling 150 million UAH through the bank to post bail for Herman Galushchenko.
Meanwhile, 23 September at 11:00 the NBU is to gather on Instytetska Street those responsible for bank financial monitoring. The official topic of the meeting is financial monitoring and currency control. The regulator head Andriy Pyshny publicly states that there will be no relaxation of financial monitoring.
Against this background, a key question arises: what happens to the bail that the court explicitly defined as a condition for releasing a person from custody, if the banking system does not allow making the corresponding payment?
The law on preventing money laundering requires checking the origin of funds, not revoking VAKS decisions. If about 15 banks simultaneously block the same type of payment, the problem goes far beyond a single monobank.
The question now is: where did the same understanding of such a risk arise across the entire banking market — and will the bail remain a real alternative to pre-trial detention, or will it become merely a line in a court decision.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Банки почали блокувати внесення застави за рішеннями ВАКС: НБУ говорить про репутаційні ризики". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.
