Igor Sotulenko
On November 25, it became known about the death of the famous Ukrainian businessman and banker Igor Sotulenko. According to the investigation, the former member of the Party of Regions, the chairman of Oschadbank (2010-2013) and Ukreximbank (2007-2010) jumped out of the window of his own house in Kyiv. The police opened a criminal case on the fact of his death, but since a suicide note was found, law enforcement officers are leaning towards the version that it was suicide. Relatives and everyone who knew Igor Nikolaevich, are shouting in unison that he was killed. The omnipresent and all-knowing former adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko even put forward a “plausible” version, according to which Sotulenko committed suicide because of loans issued by him during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, when he headed Oschadbank. And while the Interior Ministry and witch hunters (like Gerashchenko) are looking for “regional” traces in his death, the real reasons remain in the shadows. Who could have wished Igor Nikolaevich dead?
Life path
Igor Sotulenko was born in 1959 in the city of Brovary in the Kyiv region. As a child, his parents instilled in him a love of sports – he was involved in track and field and swimming. Having found his feet, he began to actively support Ukrainian Olympians, in particular, in 1996, his company sponsored eight Olympians from the Ukrainian team. All of them received a scholarship, and in the event of winning a gold medal – cars. At various times, under his patronage, Ekaterina Serebryanskaya, Yana Klochkova, Denis Silantyev, Irina Merleni, Elbrus Tadeyev and Inessa Kravets became Olympic champions.
Businessmen know him as the head of one of the first joint ventures with foreign capital in the USSR, Minolta Trading Ukraine, which grew out of the state enterprise AVTO International. In fact, Igor Sotulenko stood at the origins of the automobile business in Ukraine. In particular, he was the first to officially start importing Mazda, Suzuki and BYD cars and components for them in our country.
In 2007, at the instigation of Mykola Azarov and his political team, he headed the Supervisory Board of Ukreximbank, from which he left in 2010 for a similar position at Oschadbank. In addition, according to Forbes-Ukraine, through the Garant fund, he managed two sanatoriums, Solnechnaya Polyana in Zakarpattia and Zhemchuzhina Kryma. Incidentally, Sotulenko and Mykola Azarov’s son, Oleksiy, had a joint business – the Austrian company Landgut, which managed a poultry farm and some other agricultural assets.
In September 2014, the court ordered Sotulenko’s companies Avtointernational Metropolis and the Kommunalnogo Mashinostroeniya Plant to pay UAH 375 million. He tried to challenge this decision in court for several months, insisting on transferring the case to a court of international jurisdiction so that it could be heard under Cyprus law. However, the court refused. This meant that all of his assets would be finally and irrevocably transferred to the creditors.
“Unintentional suicide”
People who knew Sotulenko well, all deny that he committed suicide. For example, journalist Andrey Boechko, who spoke with Igor Nikolaevich shortly before his death, said that Sotulenko had grandiose plans for the future, he was planning a meeting with the head of the NOC Sergey Bubka to conclude a new sponsorship contract with Ukrainian Olympians. In addition, he had already booked a room in Rio de Janeiro. After all, it is there that the Olympics will be held next summer. Sotulenko even bought tickets for each day of the competition. Very strange for a person who intends to commit suicide, isn’t it?
According to Anton Gerashchenko (or rather those whose voices speak in his head when writing posts on Facebook), during Yanukovych’s presidency, the state banks Oschadbank and Ukreximbank (which Sotulenko headed) were the so-called “cash cows” for the “family”. They issued huge loans, for which there was no collateral. With the arrival of the new government, the question arose: where is the state money? According to Gerashchenko, law enforcement officers came to Sotulenko with this question.
The adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs believes that law enforcement officers pressured Igor Sotulenko, demanding an explanation of where the money went. According to his sources, Yanukovych’s people forced Sotulenko to issue unjustified loans that were in violation of Ukrainian laws. It is very strange to hear such things from an official who is directly connected with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Having information, he only “admits” that law enforcement officers “pressured” Igor Nikolaevich. So, from his lips, the version about suicide sounds more than unconvincing.
According to another version, Igor Nikolaevich suffered from bouts of depression and even underwent treatment in Switzerland, where he took a course of antidepressants. They say that in recent years he rarely communicated with anyone and often visited a psychologist. Many consider depression a sufficient reason for his suicide. This version can be refuted by the words of political scientist Kostya Bondarenko, who often communicated with Sotulenko in Austria, where he often visited. The political scientist said that Sotulenko was always a cheerful and active person who inspired confidence. According to Bondarenko, Igor Nikolaevich was a non-public figure, but was privy to a bunch of political intrigues of various political forces. Perhaps this is what led to his death. He also expressed the opinion that law enforcement officers are unlikely to strain themselves too much when investigating this case, because it is simply not beneficial to them.
“There is no hope that our law enforcement agencies will investigate this objectively. There are plenty of examples. It is enough to recall the so-called suicides of former Minister of Transport Kirpa, Minister of Internal Affairs Kravchenko, former Party of Regions member Chechetov and other prominent figures. I doubt that he voluntarily jumped out the window. If we recall that he once headed Ukreximbank, which is involved in multi-million dollar financial fraud, which has huge losses, and the credit period came at the time when he headed it, the interests of certain people who are in power today may be involved. Nowadays, no one is killed for failure to repay debts. If this version was voiced by Anton Gerashchenko, the main provocateur in the country, then his death is not connected with failure to repay debts.”says lawyer Rostislav Kravets.
Presidential machinations?
There is another “high-profile” case involving Igor Sotulenko, but for some reason everyone is keeping quiet about it. It is connected with a huge loan that Ukreximbank provided to the automobile company Bogdan Motors. The loan amount was unprecedented and amounted to more than UAH 340 million. Having signed all the papers, a few days later the bank’s management (represented by Igor Nikolaevich) “allegedly came to their senses” and went to court demanding that the loan be repaid.
Everything would be fine, but Bogdan Motoroz is a company of the current President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. And, of course, its managers were not going to part with the loan provided. They put forward a counter-proposal – to postpone the payment of debts to the state bank for nine years (until 2024).
Then everything followed the same pattern: Ukreximbank, allegedly by accident, missed the appeal deadline, and the court did not accept it, despite all the “arguments” of the bank’s management. As a result, the decision on a ten-year installment plan came into force.
Politicians in power insist on the version that Igor Sotulenko committed suicide for personal reasons: because of the loss of enterprises, because of depression, because of old “sins” in the positions of the main bankers of Ukraine. Perhaps he had more than enough reasons to commit suicide, but then why did he make plans for the future? Why did he plan long-term meetings and trips? A more plausible version seems to be that he was simply “removed”. For knowing too much. And it is not even particularly important who “ordered” him – representatives of the previous government or the current one. Igor Nikolaevich knew compromising facts about both. And he paid for it. And while law enforcement officers are still keeping his “suicide” note secret, more and more versions are appearing about who benefited most from his death.
Dmitry Samofalov, for SKELET-info