Former Privatbank CEO placed on wanted list

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) has placed
Oleksandr Dubilet, former CEO of Privatbank (PRBANK) on the wanted list, top
anti-corruption prosecutor Maksym Hryshchuk told Ukrinform news agency on March
29. Dubilet is suspected of participating in the embezzlement of USD 315 mln
(UAH 8.2 bln) from the bank before it was nationalized in late 2016. According
to an NABU report on March 15, the bank’s managers decided on Dec. 16, 2016
(the last business day before the bank was declared insolvent) to provide a
fictitious loan to a non-resident company which was a related party to the
bank. As part of the investigation into this episode, NABU has directed notices
of suspicion to the bank’s former CEO Dubilet, its former deputy CEO and its
former head of the interbank transaction department. According to nv.ua news
site, Dubilet is currently in Israel.

Alexander Paraschiy: This is the
second prominent case in the investigation of alleged wrongdoings of former
Privatbank managers, after a smaller one, in which the last-minute appropriation of UAH 0.14 blnis being investigated, as NABU reported in February. This is a good start,
especially taking into account that no loud detentions were made in the first
four years after the bank declared insolvent.

This is still not enough to explain the root of
Privatbank’s capital gap of UAH 184 bln (the amount covered by the government
and bailed-in creditors in 2016-2017), so we expect some more prominent cases
from law enforcement bodies in the future. Moreover, progress in such
investigations might be enough (at least at this stage) for Ukraine to set a
better dialogue with its western partners, including the U.S. and the IMF.