Oleg Bahmatyuk, better known to the UAIndex subscribers as the owner of Avangard and Ukrland farming merged company has taken over the majority shares of VAB Bank, Ukraine. Since the beginning of the purchase, Bahmatyuk was acting secretly, not making any public announcements concerning the operation and being the owner of one of the largest Ukrainian banks. Everything seemed to be fine until the point when minority shareholders started suspecting Mr. Bahmatyuk in using bank as money laundering machine and free fund for his agroholdings. As of October 11th they have filed a petition to National Bank of Ukraine, and it became publicly known today, October 12 th that National Bank reacted immediately sending an inspection to VAB bank.

The facts that leaned towards suspicious operations included interest rates which were set for majorly Bahmatyuk companies’ credit lines, 16% in UAH, which is also a deposit interest rate for other companies. The amount of operations is evaluated at 1.04 billion UAH (120 million USD). Bank has started suffering losses already, setting the level at 205.6 million UAH as of July 2011. Situation remains unclear as we will inform you upon any further development.

UAIndex