PGO sends bill of indictment against ex-NBU top managers in UAH 787 mln embezzlement case to court

Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) has finished a pretrial investigation in a criminal case where former deputy governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Oleksiy Tkachenko and director of the main department of the NBU Roman Yakovlev are suspected of participating in a criminal group created by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and businessman Serhiy Kurchenko and embezzling state-owned funds on an especially large scale.

The public relations department of PGO reported that the former officials are charged under Part 1 of Article 255 (the creation of a criminal group), Part 4 of Article 28 and Part 5 of Article 191 (embezzlement via abuse of office) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The bill of indictment has been sent to court.

"The above-mentioned persons are charged with helping to make the unlawful decision by the NBU in 2013 to issue a stabilization credit to a bank affiliated with the criminal group. The money was withdrawn abroad. A loss of UAH 787 million was caused to the state," PGO said.

The suspects paid a UAH 3 million bail and a UAH 1.5 million bail respectively after their detention. The property of the suspects has been arrested.

As reported, Kyiv's Holosiyivsky District Court on July 14, 2016 remanded two ex-officials of the NBU, former deputy head of the NBU Oleksiy Tkachenko and former director of the NBU's banking oversight department Roman Yakovlev, to 60-day pretrial confinement, setting bail at UAH 20 million and UAH 10 million for the suspects.

Later Kyiv's court of appeal reduced the bail for them and they were released.

The two suspects embezzled NBU funds in the amount of UAH 787.396 million. The money had been provided to PSC Real Bank as a bailout loan. The document also says that Tkachenko and Yakovlev acted "as part of a criminal organization" with businessman Serhiy Kurchenko, former NBU governor Ihor Sorkin and former governor of Real Bank's board Volodymyr Agafonov.