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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The Criminal Cassation Court 11 September refused to open cassation proceedings on a defense appeal challenging the decision of the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court concerning jurisdiction in the case where businessman from Dnipro Ihor Kolomoisky is charged with misappropriating 9,2 billion UAH from PrivatBank. A three-judge panel of VAKS in Kyiv had already received this proceeding for collegial review, and the trial will now continue in Kyiv. The defense sought to have the case transferred to Dnipro, but higher judicial instances rejected those motions one after another. The final decision means that the question of jurisdiction in this case can no longer be reviewed.
The Supreme Court reviewed a cassation appeal against the decision of the VAKS Appeals Chamber dated 28 August 2026, which denied the motion to transfer proceeding No.12017040000000531 from the High Anti-Corruption Court to the Sobornyi District Court of Dnipro. The relevant decision was published by the Unified State Register of Court Decisions. The panel of judges of the Criminal Cassation Court found that the appealed appellate decision does not prevent further criminal proceedings and therefore is not subject to cassation appeal.
"The decision of the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court dated 28 August 2026, which denied the motion to change the jurisdiction of the criminal proceeding, does not prevent further criminal proceedings and... is not subject to cassation appeal," the Criminal Cassation Court's ruling states.
The court also recalled that under part 5 of article 34 of the Criminal Procedure Code, disputes over jurisdiction between courts are not permitted. Thus the defense’s request to transfer the proceeding for consideration by the Grand Chamber of the Supreme Court was likewise denied — the panel noted that such a question is possible only after cassation proceedings are opened.
Why the case cannot be moved from Kyiv to Dnipro
The defense insisted the proceeding is not within VAKS’s jurisdiction because at the time of the alleged events PrivatBank was privately owned, and the position of head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional state administration, which Kolomoisky held then, had no direct relation to managing the bank’s assets. However, the appellate instance already ruled in 28 August that these arguments were unfounded. It noted that the post of head of the regional state administration belongs to category “A” of civil service, and the amount of the alleged damage exceeds the subsistence minimum established at the time of the crime by thousands of times.
NABU is investigating an episode related to events from January–March 2015. According to the detectives’ version, Kolomoisky together with accomplices appropriated 9,2 billion UAH of bank funds to finance a controlled offshore company and increase his own share in PrivatBank’s authorized capital — in this way the businessman allegedly met the requirements of the NBU’s financial rehabilitation program for the institution for 2015–2017 years. The suspects are accused of forcing the bank to repurchase its own bonds from the offshore company Drovale Limited based on forged documents, and more than 446 million UAH were subsequently transferred to accounts of related legal entities under the guise of securities purchase–sale operations to launder the funds. From 2 March 2014 to 24 March 2015, Kolomoisky held the position of head of the Dnipropetrovsk ODA, which made him at the time of the events a category “A” civil servant and placed the case within NABU’s jurisdiction.
In addition to Kolomoisky, five former top bank managers received suspicions in the case — under articles 191, 209 and 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which provide liability for misappropriation of property, official forgery, and legalization of proceeds of crime. Namely:
Director of the Interbank Dealing Department Yaroslav Luhovyi;
former chair of the board of PrivatBank Oleksandr Dubilet;
Dubilet’s deputy Liudmyla Shmalchenko;
head of the Interbank Operations Department Nadiia Konopkina;
deputy head of the Department for Servicing Correspondent Bank Accounts Tetiana Yakymenko.
Previously, Informator reported that the VAKS Appeals Chamber denied the defense’s motion to transfer the case from Kyiv to the Sobornyi District Court of Dnipro, finding that the proceeding meets all jurisdictional criteria of the High Anti-Corruption Court. We also reported that Kolomoisky’s case was referred to trial back on 6 August, when a prosecutor from the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office filed an indictment against the businessman and five former PrivatBank top managers. Additionally, Informator wrote that former PrivatBank top manager Tymur Novikov has been mentioned in U.S. court cases, where he appears as a key figure in large-scale schemes to siphon funds from the bank for the benefit of Kolomoisky and his partner.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "ВАКС відмовив у відводі прокурора у справі Коломойського про заволодіння 9,2 млрд грн з ПриватБанку". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Informator.
