Officers of Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) have arrested the chairman of the state-owned Ukreximbank, Oleksandr Hrytsenko, on suspicion of creating an organized crime group, embezzlement, and money laundering.
SBU spokeswoman Olena Hitlyanska said on November 16 that the suspect was being held in a temporary detention center on charges that involve complicity in laundering stolen assets connected to the inner circle of former President Viktor Yanukovych.
The banker's lawyer, Denys Halanskiy, said the following day that his client was being punished for going after assets linked with the former president's entourage.
The 78-page indictment says Hrytsenko, who has headed the bank since August 2014, allegedly took part in unfreezing assets belonging to the media empire of the former president's reputed moneybag man, Serhiy Kurchenko, the UNIAN news agency reported.
Ukrainian Media Holding (UMH) once published the most widely-circulated weekly news magazine in the country and had rights to publish the Russian-language versions of Forbes and Vogue in Ukraine.
Kurchenko and Yanukovych fled to Russia in February 2014 in the wake of the pro-democracy Maidan movement.
A trained lawyer, Kurchenko had bought UMH in 2013 partly with a loan from Ukreximbank.
Ukreximbank is Ukraine’s third-largest bank with more than $7 billion in assets, according to the central bank.
Meanwhile, another bank chairman, Oleksandr Pysaruk of the Austrian-owned Ukrainian unit of Raiffeisen Bank, was released on bail on November 15.
He is suspected of participating in a $49 million embezzlement scheme during a bank bailout in 2015 when serving as the deputy chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, the country's central bank.
His current employer posted the $208,000 bail and Pysaruk has returned to work.
Pysaruk, also a former employee of the International Monetary Fund for nearly three years, "will continue to serve as chairman of the board of Raiffeisen Bank Aval," said Raiffeisen Bank International Chief Financial Officer Martin Gruhl from Vienna. "We are all convinced that all suspicions of misconduct will be lifted from Mr. Pysaruk in the near future..."