NBU bans Poroshenko from exercising voting rights for nearly 65% of shares in IIB Bank
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has applied a measure of influence to the Member of Parliament, the fifth President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko in the form of a temporary, until the violation is eliminated, ban on voting rights for 64.98292% of shares in the International Investment Bank (IIB, Kyiv), which he indirectly owns.
As noted in a message on the NBU website, the Committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Activities, Payment Infrastructure Oversight adopted the relevant decision on October 20 of this year.
In addition, he banned the right to vote for these shares of PJSC Closed Non-Diversified Corporate Investment Fund Prime Assets Capital, which owns them directly.
Poroshenko’s lawyer Ilya Novikov, in a comment to the Interfax-Ukraine agency, noted that the violation in question is a decree on sanctions against a politician, which are preventive in nature, and the only way to "eliminate the violation" is for the Supreme Court to cancel the sanctions, which he insists are illegal.
"This is a deliberate involvement of the National Bank by the Office of the President in political persecution. Because the NBU, without considering the issue on the merits, automatically, on its own initiative, recognized the fifth president as "a person with a not-so-impeccable business reputation." The decree on sanctions does not provide for this, but the NBU considers the president’s negative opinion of a citizen to be sufficient reason to consider the latter’s reputation to be bad. This is a political attack that has nothing to do with the constitutional functions of the NBU and in the future may negatively affect the recognition of the National Bank by Ukraine’s partners as an independent regulator of the economy. The National Bank’s interference in the persecution of the political opposition in the interests of the current government is absolutely illegal. It can lead to a loss of trust among allies and slow down the process of Ukraine’s European integration," the lawyer said.
Novikov recalled that at the last hearing in the case of Poroshenko’s lawsuit, which took place on November 7, the court found that the disk with the draft sanctions, which the NSDC supposedly considered on February 12, was recorded the next day, February 13, and this is enough to completely rule out the legality of the decision on sanctions and cancel them along with the restrictions of the National Bank.
The next meeting of the Supreme Court will be held on November 21.
As reported, on April 28, 2025, the Committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Activities of the NBU recognized Poroshenko’s business reputation as the owner of 64.98292% of IIB shares as not impeccable due to the application of NSDC sanctions to him by presidential decree of February 12, 2025.
As the NBU noted then that such a decision does not affect the work of the bank and interaction with clients - individuals and legal entities, charitable organizations. At that time, the National Bank reported that other measures of influence, such as deprivation of voting rights, were not applied to Poroshenko in connection with the recognition of his business reputation as impeccable,
In turn, Poroshenko announced on April 11 that the NBU plans to recognize him as a "person with impeccable business reputation", using the presidential decree on sanctions for this.
"In fact, consideration of the issue of "imperfect reputation" indicates serious problems with the reputation of the National Bank itself, which according to the Constitution should be a purely independent regulator, but in fact has become the executor of a political order…" – this is how Poroshenko, who once headed the NBU Council in his career, commented on the regulator’s decision.
He also regarded this as a stage of "cleaning up the political field and creating problems for the opposition."
In turn, Poroshenko’s lawyers stated that they would appeal this decision National Bank.
According to the NBU, as of September 1, 2025, IIB ranked 29th among 60 banks in Ukraine in terms of total assets (UAH 10.85 billion). In the structure of the banking system’s assets, it occupies 0.28%. The bank’s net loss for the first eight months of this year amounted to UAH 15.3 million.
