Gontareva suburban home destroyed by arson fire

The suburban Kyiv home of Valeria Gontareva, the
governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) between 2014 and 2017, was set
on fire and destroyed on the early morning of Sept. 17. The perpetrators threw
a bottle containing inflammable liquid over the house’s fence, Gontareva told
the nv.ua news site, which posted video of the blaze. Internal Affairs Minister
Arsen Avakov vowed to investigate the arson, calling it “an unacceptable
display of criminal pressure” in a statement posted this morning on the National
Police website. “He who ordered and carried this out at the moment of the
arrival of the IMF mission to Ukraine is not simply an arsonist. He is an enemy
who is harming his own state.”

The Sept. 17 arson is the latest of a series of
life-threatening attacks against Gontareva and her family in recent
weeks.  On the early morning of Sept. 5, the car of her daughter-in-law
was set on fire outside her home in central Kyiv. On Aug. 30, Gontareva was hit
by a car while walking in central London, where she said she has resided since
summer 2018. She reported having undergone at least two operations on fractures
on the bones of her foot. At the time of the car fire, she told the liga.net
news site, “The fully falsified cases by the corrupt prosecutor (Kostiantyn)
Êulyk are not enough for them. The complaints of (Andriy) Portnov against
standard NBU decrees with accusations of state treason are not enough for them.
They have now gone from verbal threats to real actions,” she said.

Among these verbal threats, she told BBC Ukraine in
June that billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky threatened to transfer her to Ukraine “in
private order” in an interview if she didn’t return voluntarily, which she
characterized as a kidnapping threat. Speaking on background, Poroshenko administration
officials allege Kolomoisky, the main sponsor of Volodymyr Zelensky’s
presidential run, is directing the current campaign of persecution against
Poroshenko’s entourage, the pravda.com.ua news site reported in April.
Kolomoisky has repeatedly dismissed such claims.

Gontareva earned the respect of the international
banking community for conducting nationalizations of insolvent banks following
Ukraine’s economic collapse in 2014, being credited with rescuing Ukraine’s
banking system. She began teaching at the London School of Economics in
September 2018. In April, Kostiantyn Kulyk of the Prosecutor General’s Office
named Gontareva and several other Poroshenko administration officials as
suspects in criminal cases involving Serhiy Kurchenko, a behind-the-scenes
player in the Yanukovych administration who handled many large, questionable
business and financial dealings. She has ignored several summons to appear for
questioning in the cases.