In total, about $100 million passed through the so-called “laundromat” in the corruption scheme in the energy sector.
The National Bank of Ukraine stated that it does not have information on how dollars in the packaging of the US Federal Reserve Bank ended up in the office of those involved in a corruption scheme in the energy sector.
According to an UNIAN correspondent, this was announced by Deputy Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine Dmitry Oleinik during a meeting of the Temporary Investigative Commission (TIC) on economic security.
“Unfortunately, there is no unique register against which it was possible to check the barcode, its number and compare where these banknotes came from in Ukraine. Perhaps the Federal Reserve System has such information, but such a register certainly does not exist in Ukraine,” said the deputy chairman of the NBU.
According to him, there are now eight banks that import dollars and euros into Ukraine. Several of them use them only for their own use, while others sell them to banks and other financial market participants.
In turn, the head of the NABU detective unit, Alexander Abakumov, said that this is the second time that NABU has encountered such an amount of funds that arrived in Ukraine in the package of the US Federal Reserve Bank.
“Next time, apparently, we will have a situation where no one will be able to answer us how they got to Ukraine. In fact, the Federal Reserve Service of the United States of America records to whom it sells these funds, but in Europe and Ukraine no one is doing this. There is a proposal from people’s deputies to the National Bank of Ukraine to introduce a form for recording the import of such amounts of cash into Ukraine, to whom they are sold. This will actually be a great contribution to preventing such situations,” Abakumov said.
Corruption in the energy sector – what is known
Let us remind you that detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau conducted searches on the morning of November 10 at the home of businessman Timur Mindich.
On November 10, it became known that the function of legalizing illegally obtained funds from a large-scale corruption case in the Ukrainian energy sector was assigned to a separate office of the criminal organization, which is located in the center of Kyiv.
NABU noted that the premises belonged to the family of former people’s deputy and now senator of the Russian Federation Andrei Derkach, accused by NABU and SAP in another criminal proceeding.
The bureau noted that through this office strict accounting of funds received was carried out, “black accounting” was carried out and money laundering was organized through a network of non-resident companies. According to investigators, in total, about $100 million passed through the so-called “laundromat.”
President Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree imposing sanctions against businessman Timur Mindich and financier Alexander Tsukerman, who are involved in the case of creating a large-scale corruption scheme in the energy sector.
