Disclosure of customer checks of clients of the Kyiv-based International Investment Bank (also known as MIB) with reported ties with Oleksandr Yanukovych, a son of disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, is limited because of bank secrecy, the National Bank of Ukraine’s (NBU) press service has told the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
“Information on the activities of individual banks and their clients, which the NBU receives during the supervision process, are banking secrets,” NBU’s press service said.
As earlier reported, Radio Free Liberty/Radio Europe’s “Schemes” TV program on Nov. 8 reported that a group of individuals had cashed out several hundred million hryvnias out of a total of about Hr 2 billion through MIB. The funds reportedly belonged directly to Oleksandr Yanukovych and his allies: 33 employees of his bank and a dozen firms. Their accounts were previously frozen, but Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court in 2016-2017 lifted the arrest from some accounts. According to the “Schemes” investigation, most of those funds were immediately cashed out.
MIB said on its website that these operations complied with Ukrainian legislation.
MIB was founded in 2008. As of July 1, 2018, the bank ranked 25 with assets worth Hr 7.832 billion among 83 functioning Ukrainian banks, according to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). NBU data shows that as of January 1, 2016, the principal owners of the bank were Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (60 percent of shares), Ihor Kononenko (14.94 percent), Oleh Zymin (9.9008 percent), and Oleh Hladkovsky (9.9008 percent).
Poroshenko announced in January 2016 that he had placed his confectionary company Roshen and MIB in a blind trust.
