Igor Gilenko has at least two personas.
In Ukraine, he became a scandalous fugitive charged with major embezzlement from Nadra Bank, one of the first poster boys of bad banking practices in 2009 — foreshadowing the multibillion-dollar bank fraud that came later and that successive presidents and central bank governors did nothing to stop.
In Australia, his second home, he was an investor whose success story made it into the magazines.
Something changed on July 12, when the Australian media unexpectedly reported that Gilenko had been wanted in Ukraine since 2009 for massive fraud in the Nadra Bank that he chaired.
The Australian newspaper reported that Gilenko, 50, is not in Ukraine or Australia, where he was a permanent resident for seven years, and is believed to be hiding from prosecution in Russia, where he has citizenship.
The newspaper started writing about Gilenko again after the newspaper discovered that Gilenko’s other company, a Melbourne-registered Australian Finance Structure Pty Ltd, was mentioned in an FBI indictment of Russian mobster Semion Mogilevich.
The Australian journalists don’t know when Gilenko left Australia, where he is mostly known as the co-founder of Dodo, a big internet provider that sold for more than $200 million in 2013.
Gilenko co-founded Dodo in 2003, investing $2.5 million. According to The Australian, he was Australia’s resident for seven years and sought citizenship based on his investments, but hasn’t got it. He sold his share in Dodo around 2010.
Gilenko chaired the Nadra Bank from 1997 until it was declared insolvent (for the first time) in 2009. The bank received about Hr 10.4 billion in loans from the central bank that stretched its existence until February 2015, when it finally was declared insolvent again. Its assets are being liquidated.
In 2011, shortly after the first insolvency, the bank was bought by a scandalous gas oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who has been living in Vienna since 2014 and who is wanted by the U.S. on bribery charges. Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said in 2015 that Firtash is suspected of stealing the central bank’s loan money from Nadra and he currently owes the National Bank of Ukraine Hr 12 billion.
Firtash told his Inter TV that he offered his personal guarantees to assume responsibility for the 2008-2009 central bank loans, but the NBU press service said that no such personal guaranteers were given then. The NBU also hasn’t explained why it is not seeking to recover the money from Firtash by filing a lawsuit. The press service said on July 14 that it is seeking the sale of assets used as collateral for the loans.
As for Gilenko, Ukrainian authorities believe that he was responsible for the Nadra Bank’s initial insolvency. He is wanted on the charges of embezzling hundreds of millions of hryvnias from the bank.
Ukrainian media previously reported that Gilenko left Ukraine at once after the central bank introduced temporary administration in Nadra and dismissed Gilenko as chairman in February 2009.
He was declared wanted at the end of 2009 in Ukraine. However, he wasn’t put on Interpol’s international wanted list.
In 2005, Gilenko made it to the BRW Young Rich List, a list of Australia’s wealthiest young entrepreneurs, entertainers and sports people. He was 39 at the time and was listed with a co-owner of Dodo Larry Kestelman. Together they were worth $87 million.
The Australian quotes Gilenko’s former partner Kestelman saying he hasn’t dealt with Gilenko for many years and doesn’t know his whereabouts. Neither he knew of his dealings in Ukraine, he said.
“He seemed like a very legitimate businessman, and that’s what I still believe of him,” Kestelman told The Australian.
If Gilenko is arrested and found guilty of embezzlement, he can face up to 12 years in the Ukrainian prison.
However, Ukrainian law enforcement bodies have not reported any updates on Gilenko’s case in a long while.
The press service of the General Prosecutor’s Office did not respond to the Kyiv Post’s request for an update by the time this story was published.
Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, is pessimistic about Gilenko’s case.
“Not a single positive result of a criminal proceeding that would lead to conviction of a bank’s owner is known,” she told the Kyiv Post.
In her words, there are many loopholes in Ukrainian legislature that allow prosecutors to minimize punishment, enabling fraudsters to get away without paying for the losses they caused.
Kaleniuk does not expect the situation to improve in the near future, saying that apparently returning the money of the bankrupt banks is not the top priority of the Prosecutor General’s Office that mostly talks about trying to return money stolen from Ukraine by ousted resident Viktor Yanukovych.
“But there are more assets at stake than the so-called Yanukovych money,” she said.
To be more precise, about $11.4 billion has been looted from Ukraine’s banks in recent years, according to estimates by the National Bank of Ukraine and Deposit Guarantee Fund. Of that, $3.2 billion in loans are still owed to the central bank.
Nadra Bank is one of the biggest deadbeats. It owes Ukraine’s central bank Hr 10.4 billion (worth $419 million now) for loans taken out in 2008-2009, when the hryvnia’s value was much higher.
Igor Gilenko
Dmytro Firtash
