The National Bank of Ukraine (the NBU) has urged the National Police of Ukraine to conduct an unbiased investigation into criminal offenses that were committed by former managers of the Corporate Non-State Pension Fund of the NBU (the CNPF) during 2009-2014.
According to the CNPF’s Council, despite the continuous constructive dialogue between the NBU and prejudicial inquiry authorities, the investigation has made little progress.
"It has been four years since the new management of the central bank discovered the fraudulent dealings involving the assets of the CNPF in what appears to be the most massive fraud in Ukraine’s history of occupational retirement provision. As it stands now, nobody has been punished and no guilty verdict has been passed by courts", said Serhii Kozachenko, Director of the Department of the Corporate Non-State Pension Fund of the NBU.
However, the NBU will further insist on bringning the guilty parties to justice.
"We hope that the facts of fraudulent dealings with the CNPF’s assets by former managers in 2009-2014 will soon be submitted to court as indictments, and that lawful, informed, and reasonable evidence-based decisions will then be made. To that end, we are willing to provide our outmost support to the investigation as the law permits. Let me also assure the CNPF’s participants that we will do our best to expedite the effective investigation. The NBU will regularly inform the participants on the course of the investigation within the investigation secrecy framework”, said Serhii Kozachenko.
For your information, in January 2015, the Central Office of Investigations of the Security Service of Ukraine (the SSU) launched a pretrial investigation under criminal case No. 22015000000000031. The preliminary legal assessment of the actions of the CNPF’s former managers is as follows:
- legalization (laundering) of the proceeds from crime committed by an organized group or on an especially large scale (Article 209, part 3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine)
- misappropriation, embezzlement, or seizure of property committed through abuse of official capacity by an organized group or on an especially large scale (Article 191, part 5 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
More details are available at the link.
In January 2017, the SSU completed the pretrial investigation into one of the episodes in the criminal case on alleged criminal actions committed by the CNPF’s former manager Oleh Makarenko in collusion with managers of Triumph LLC under Article 191, part 5 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (embezzlement in the amount of UAH 11 million) and submitted the respective indictment to court. Safeguard measures such as bail and personal obligations have been applied to the suspects.