Boris Prikhodko: how to steal billions and get forgiveness in Ukraine

Why are people still walking free in Kyiv who helped the Yanukovych regime steal billions from the country and people? Apparently because they later helped the new government steal billions. The story of the “miraculous rescue” of former deputy head of the NBU Boris Prikhodko from criminal liability leads us to this conclusion. The man who was directly involved in the banking scams of 2014, which resulted in the fall of the hryvnia and the country’s economy, was accused in the case of the actual theft of 2 billion, and for many years he was a confidant and companion of the “Donetsk families.”

“Fox Hunters”

Prikhodko Boris Viktorovich. He is sometimes confused with his namesake Boris Grigorievich Prikhodko, the former head of the board of the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine. Moreover, Boris Viktorovich also has something to do with the agricultural business – after all, he is accused of stealing money from Agrarian Fund OJSC. But that’s where their similarities end. Our hero was born on January 23, 1973 in the village of Losinovka, Nezhinsky district, Chernigov region. Boris Prikhodko stubbornly refuses to talk about his childhood and youth, and even in his biography he hides the day and month of birth, who his parents are, where and with whom he studied, and with whose help he came out into the public eye. But in 2013, proud of his former students, the deputy head of the National Bank shed some light on the distant past by the former head of the communications circle at the Station for Young Technicians in the town of Nosovka (Chernigov region). It was under his leadership in the 80s, schoolboy Borya Prikhodko was actively involved in radio communications and “fox hunting”. Moreover, he not only studied, but also won republican competitions. Once his photo was even published in the newspaper “Radyanska Osvita” (No. 38, 1988).

In the photo in the Radyanska Osvita newspaper, in the center – Boris Prikhodko

But the point is not only that in the USSR, the Fox Hunting sports competitions, which involved amateur direction finding of hidden radio stations, were organized under the patronage of the KGB – and the winners of these competitions attracted the attention of the intelligence services as potential young personnel. It is interesting that together with Boris Prikhodko, his peer Valery Davidenko, the future owner of the Agrodom joint venture, a companion of Boris Prikhodko and Yuri Kolobov at Terra-Bank, and Deputy Minister of Agricultural Policy of Ukraine (2013), went to the same Nosov UST, to the same circle of radio amateurs. -2014), now a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, a member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction. who recently became famous for bought myself a new Swiss watch “Audemars Piguet” for 286 thousand hryvnia.

Valery Davidenko

Their paths diverged for a short time after school. Boris Prikhodko in 1993 went to work at Agroprombank “Ukraine” – the same scandalous bank through which billions were siphoned off in the 90s, where future President Viktor Yushchenko worked. Let us repeat once again that Prikhodko hides his past simply to the point of indecency, not even indicating in his biography whether he served in the army, which university he graduated from, and where exactly he began his career as a banker. According to fragmentary information from sources Skelet.Infohis first duty station was not in the Kiev office of “Ukraine”, but in one of its branches in the Chernigov region. One can only guess who initially accepted the 20-year-old guy there (at best, a third-year student), but it obviously couldn’t have happened without someone’s patronage. Prikhodko worked at Ukraina until 2001, until the liquidation of the bank, gradually rising through the ranks and moving to the capital, where he acquired his first Kyiv apartment in a high-rise at Prirechnaya 37. After Bank Ukraina scandalously ordered long to live, Boris Prikhodko transferred to work at the Kiev bank Khreshchatyk, where he worked until 2003.

But fate shook his childhood friend. Judging by the biography of Valery Davidenko, in the 90s he took on everything: he was the director of an agricultural enterprise, an engineer at Ukrainian House of Communications LLC, and in the 2000s he became an insurance manager. In general, either things weren’t going well for him, or he simply didn’t want to admit what he was really doing. But judging by the fact that he still has very wide connections in the Chernigov region, including among corrupt officials, shadow businesses and the owners of local “titushki”, there are big doubts about the fact that in his youth Davidenko was a simple engineer and insurance agent. By the way, in 2016, Davidenko was named the curator of the “Our Land” party in the Chernihiv region, and this political project of Bankova, created in opposition to the “Oppoblok”, relies on the most corrupt and even semi-criminal local elites.

Things have improved dramatically for our “fox hunters” since 2003. Boris Prikhodko then transferred to Oschadbank, where he quickly became close to its treasury director, Yuri Kolobov. There were already a lot of influential people behind Kolobov: mother and son Arbuzov, Sergei Tigipko, Artemy Ershov and Sergei Levochkin. And at Oschadbank, Boris Prikhodko quickly became close to Yuri Kolobov – so that when Kolobov was removed from the chair of the bank’s treasury director in 2008, he handed it over to Prikhodko as his successor. And Prikhodko then worked in this position until 2012, later moving to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to the position of first deputy chairman. Let us recall that the chairman of the NBU at that time was Sergei Arbuzov (and after him his confidant Igor Sorkin), and Prikhodko was assigned to the NBU by the same Yuri Kolobov, who then served as Minister of Finance. And this is not to mention the fact that the Kolobov-Arbuzov-Prikhodko trio were part of the inner circle of business connections of Yuri Ivanyushchenko (Yura Enikievsky).

But how could Boris Prikhodko forget about his childhood friend and radio club comrade?! And in 2004, Valery Davidenko’s ordeal ended, because he founded a large agricultural company, JV Agrodom, and became a Chernigov agricultural baron. But no one has ever raised the question of where the former engineer and insurance manager got the multimillion-dollar sum to create Agrodom (its authorized capital alone amounts to one and a half million hryvnia), to buy and absorb other agricultural enterprises, to rent land and equipment. Maybe he won the lottery, like the current Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko? Or did his friend Boris Prikhodko help him with preferential loans using state money from Oschadbank?

Davidenko happily grew sunflowers and corn until the spring of 2013, and then transferred Agrodom and his other companies to his mother Davidenko Valentina Nikolaevna and, with the help of Boris Prikhodko and Yuri Kolobov, sat in the chair of the Deputy Minister of Agricultural Policy of Ukraine. Soon becoming a figure in the international Chinese loan scandal ($3 billion, for which they were never paid), as well as a lesser-known case about the creation of their own customs terminal in the city of Kozelets, Chernihiv region. Of course, Davidenko did all this not alone, but as a member of a large team that created its schemes with the blessing and under the “roof” of Yuri Ivanyushchenko. Moreover, journalists pointedly singled out Davidenko, calling him “a trusted, diligent executor of Ivanyushchenko’s orders.” Well, now he is ready to just as diligently carry out the orders of the “family” of the current president, if they assign him to some position!

Prikhodko Boris

Boris Prikhodko, Valery Davidenko, Yuri Kolobov: schemes of banker friends

But Boris Prikhodko, Valery Davidenko and Yuriy Kolobov had something else in common: in 2007, already being friends and partners, they acquired the Invest-Credit bank cheaply (for debts), which they renamed Terra-Bank. This generally looked somehow suspicious: okay, Davidenko was an “independent businessman,” but after all, Prikhodko and Kolobov were then in charge of the treasury of the state-owned Oschadbank, and the relevant authorities should have asked them a question about what kind of money they acquired their own bank? But this question did not arise, since power in the country at that time was more than half owned by the “anti-crisis coalition” and the Yanukovych-Azarov government. However, when the government soon changed, no one remembered this either. But the previously unremarkable bank suddenly began to rapidly increase capital through an additional issue of shares (the Ukrainian Insurance Group CJSC began gradually buying them up), as well as by attracting budgetary funds from government programs – for example, mortgage. And distribute the raised money in the form of loans to several companies.

These companies never repaid the loans, but blamed everything on the crisis. In 2010, the new owners of the bank (through the Ukrainian Insurance Group they became Vadim Kopylov and Kirill Shevchenko) even allegedly published a list of debtors, but not a single specific name appeared in the media.

It was clear that Kopylov and Shevchenko were unlikely to be suckers who bought a bank with bad debts. Firstly, they didn’t really panic, and calmly reacted to the fact that the acquired bank had old debts. And secondly, they were experienced financiers: Kopylov previously worked in the government and headed Naftogaz, and Shevchenko worked for 10 years at Finance and Credit Bank (since 2014 he has headed Ukrgasbank). In addition, there was another interesting nuance: in December 2006, Shevchenko was appointed by the “coalition” as chairman of the board of the State Mortgage Institution, and soon after that Kolobov and Prikhodko acquired Terra-Bank and made it a participant in the mortgage program. Kopylov was then Deputy Minister of Finance of Mykola Azarov (who was also the First Deputy Prime Minister), as well as his close friend and participant in many joint corruption projects. Therefore, it became quite obvious that the Kolobov-Prikhodko-Davidenko trio and the Shevchenko-Kolov duo were participants in one scheme, perhaps more than one, carried out under the cover of high-ranking officials of the “anti-crisis coalition” and the Yanukovych-Azarov government. But until now, the affairs of Terra-Bank in 2007-2009 For some reason, neither investigators nor journalists were interested.

Kirill Shevchenko

The media are still silent about the details of Boris Prikhodko’s activities as first deputy head of the National Bank. Meanwhile, according to Skelet.Infohis very purpose was very curious. So, at the end of 2012, the head of the NBU, Sergei Arbuzov, became a deputy prime minister and began to select his replacement. He made Igor Sorkin his successor, who served for more than 15 years in the Donetsk department of the NBU and was a trusted and reliable “cashier” of Donetsk “families.” But Arbuzov appointed Boris Prikhodko as the first deputy head of the NBU. It was reported that Yuriy Kolobov personally lobbied for his candidacy – but many clans and “families” wanted to place their people in the leadership of the NBU, so the competition for the position was furious. By the way, at the same time Kolobov was appointed Minister of Finance of Ukraine. So Prikhodko became a member of the team that took over the finances of Ukraine: Kolobov and Arbuzov in the government, and Prikhodko and Sorkin in the NBU. And obviously not for his talents, but for his willingness to work hard according to the schemes of Arbuzov and Kolobov – therefore Boris Prikhodko is directly involved in all their frauds and scams, including transactions with bonds.

Why didn’t the Prosecutor General’s Office investigate all this? Maybe because the financial group Investment Capital Ukraine (ICU) of Valeria Gontareva, the future head of the National Bank and the favorite of Petro Poroshenko, participated in the bond scams as an intermediary?

The hand of the law tried to grab Prikhodko and Sorkin by the buttocks only in the most recent episode of their stormy joint activity: the scandalous case of fraud with the funds of the Agrarian Fund. I tried, because in the end Sorkin simply fled from Ukraine, and Prikhodko cleverly extricated himself. So, from the beginning of February 2014, the “Donetsk” began to actively pack their suitcases, both with gold and dollars. Some cashed out or withdrew their “hard earned money”, and some were in a hurry to “grab big” for the last time. Almost all of these schemes were implemented through the NBU, the Ministry of Finance, state and private banks, government agencies and funds. The methods of banal theft and transfer of funds abroad were based on the schemes of 2008-2009, according to which banks then cheated the state and depositors of tens of billions of hryvnia, at the same time collapsing the national currency. Banks close to the “families” of Yanukovych and Ivanyushchenko began receiving refinancing and stealing depositors’ money, changing it into dollars and transferring it abroad, already in December 2013. At the same time, Boris Prikhodko was not only in the know, he was directly involved in all this.

One of the “vacuum cleaners” through which they collected (simply stole) money from everywhere was then “Brock Business Bank”, which Sergei Kurchenko had recently bought from the Buryakov brothers. And this bank began feverishly taking out loans wherever possible, clearly not intending to pay them back. The management of the NBU (Sorkin, Prikhodko) was well aware of this, but, nevertheless, in February 2014, they allocated a loan to BrokBusinessBank in the amount of 2.069 billion hryvnia. With this money, the bank bought bonds from the Agar Fund: the deal was approved by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy (Valery Davidenko participated in this), and Gontareva’s ICU acted as intermediaries. Then the Agrarian Fund, with the permission of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, placed these 2.069 billion hryvnia on deposit in the same BrokBusinessBank – and the bank simply stole it, distributing it in the form of loans to its front companies.

And now the “revolution of dignity” has taken place. Sorkin, Arbuzov, Kurchenko and many more “Donetsk people” made their escape, taking with them the stolen billions. But their friends, companions and accomplices remained. Valery Davidenko remained in his position until mid-March 2014. And for several more months, no one was in a hurry to either fire or hold Boris Prikhodko accountable – he was only demoted from the first to the usual deputy head of the NBU, who became Stepan Kubiv after Sorkin fled. And here’s what’s curious: Kubiv immediately continued the practice of distributing stabilization loans and refinancing to banks, although even with the naked eye it was clear that this money was being stolen and withdrawn – and now not by the “Donetsk”, but by the Maidan oligarchs. And if under Igor Sorkin the NBU gave banks 24 billion hryvnia, then Stepan Kubiv distributed 61 billion in three months: of which 11.7 billion to Privatbank and 10.9 billion to Oleg Bakhmatyuk’s banks. It is not surprising that the hryvnia exchange rate dropped from 9.3 (end of February 2014) to 14 (June 2014). However, then the NBU was headed by Valeria Gontareva, who in a few months distributed over a hundred billion more to the banks! The result is that the hryvnia collapsed to the current rate of 25-26.

And Boris Prikhodko continued to work at the NBU – perhaps because he gave Kubiv and then Gontareva advice on how best to organize these refinancing scams, which brought down both the Ukrainian economy and the standard of living of Ukrainians. And only at the end of July 2014, the Prosecutor General’s Office detained Prikhodko in the case of the actual theft of 2.069 billion hryvnia, which the Agrarian Fund placed in BrokBusinessBank. On August 1, Prikhodko was arrested, and the court announced the amount of bail on which he could be released – 200 million hryvnia, an amount unheard of in the history of Ukrainian justice! But he was fired from the NBU only on October 22, and even then only according to the lustration list, as an “accomplice of the regime,” and not accused of colossal thefts.

But then snap parliamentary elections take place, Valery Davidenko receives a mandate and soon joins Petro Poroshenko’s team, and on December 10, 2014, his friend Boris Prikhodko is completely quietly, almost secretly released, without even taking bail from him. Then it suddenly turned out that no more charges were being brought against him, although the Prosecutor General’s Office did not report his innocence either.

Encouraged by this outcome of the case, Boris Prikhodko even went for broke and, plucking up the audacity, decided to try to be reinstated in the National Bank, for which he filed a lawsuit to cancel his lustration. This claim was satisfied on January 28, 2016 by the District Administrative Court of Kyiv. True, no one was going to vacate the place already occupied by others in the leadership of the NBU for him, so the National Bank filed an appeal against the decision of the District Court. But on March 2, 2016, the Kyiv Court of Appeal stopped the consideration of the appeal, essentially upholding the decision on the “purity” of Boris Prikhodko before the law, people and conscience. In fact, this gave him every reason not only to be reinstated in his position, but also to demand compensation for illegal dismissal. But, apparently, Prikhodko’s patrons advised him not to “greyhound” too much, but to be content with his forgiveness. This is how another operator of the Donetsk corruption schemes escaped from well-deserved responsibility, as they say, whistling merrily.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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