Budget organizations in Kyiv are urgently transferred to Oschadbank for service.
Kievans are in shock: clinics, hospitals, schools, factories and other budgetary organizations of the city are being massively and urgently transferred to service only in one bank – notorious for its disgusting service and exorbitant commissions, Oschadbank. The issue is resolved in a strict order and is not subject to discussion.
Return to the Soviet past?
On September 30, a letter appeared from the Department of Finance of the Kyiv City State Administration to all managers of budget funds, the essence of which was to transfer all budget-funded enterprises and organizations to be serviced by one bank, Oschad, as soon as possible.
The basis for the dispatch was the scandalous protocol decision of the Cabinet of Ministers on September 11 of this year: the government demanded that all government agencies and budgetary organizations unquestioningly switch to servicing in state banks. It was not just about salary projects – it was understood that all accounts of state and utility enterprises should be kept in state banks.
For a minute, this meant that in one fell swoop it was necessary to transfer the salaries of 5 million people and multimillion-dollar enterprise accounts from several dozen commercial banks to three state ones. Or rather, one – since on the list of Ukreximbank, Ukrgasbank and Oschadbank, only the latter has the resources to service such a volume of clients and funds. By the way, Oschadbank has the most extensive and numerous retail network, numbering more than 5 thousand branches throughout the country, including the most inaccessible areas, as well as the “gray zone” of the ATO, which is not controlled today by the Ukrainian authorities. The latter, by the way, is the topic of a separate large investigation. We are now returning to the problems of salary cards.
The formal motive for this decision was the fact that Ukrainian public sector employees – including the army, some combat units of the ATO – received their salaries on the cards of a number of Russian banks. So, in any case, say the supporters of the idea of transferring salaries exclusively to state banks. Ukrainian soldiers who receive salaries in the banks of an enemy country during military operations – sounds, you see, absurd. But it was not possible to find out to what extent this absurd topic is true, and to what extent the information is true. Let us add in the margins that the very representative offices of Russian banks, whose names appeared in this scandal, flatly denied the existence of ATO salary projects for them.
So, the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers came as a bolt from the blue for millions of Ukrainians and for the entire banking sector.
Now people will have to get used to the already forgotten queues at the Oschad windows and run around cities and villages in search of their “native” ATMs – this state bank is not included in the unified ATM systems that were created by commercial partner banks and in which you can cash out without a commission.
Bankers were faced with the fact that multi-million dollar salary projects would have to come out of their financial institutions all at once.
Anatomy of deception
Why did the Cabinet of Ministers so zealously undertake to push through the interests of Oschadbank? The answer, oddly enough, lies on the surface.
Andrey Pyshny
The head of the board of Oschad, Mr. Pyshny, is a childhood friend of the prime minister. (Read more about him: Andrey Pyshny. Yatsenyuk’s godfather and the murderer of Oschadbank). Once upon a time their fathers introduced them. Pyshny, who comes from a family of security officials, had a father who at one time was the head of the local colony. And with Yatsenyuk, he taught at the law department at Chernivtsi University, from which both Andrey Pyshny and Arseniy Yatsenyuk successfully graduated.
Taking advantage of his friendship with the prime minister, he at one time became deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council – thus saving him from liability before the law for unrepaid millions of loans taken from Oschadbank.
Now, Pyshny was promised the position of Minister of Finance in the new Cabinet. However, he refused, citing the fact that he was working at Oschadbank under a five-year contract. But why? After all, friendship with the current prime minister really frees up Mr. Pyshny’s hands. And the shadow schemes worked out over the years of leadership of Oschad still continue to work.
Thanks to the “competent” management of this structure by Mr. Pyshny, the bank found itself in a financial stalemate. If 12-13 billion UAH are not poured into it immediately, it may collapse and bury under it not only hundreds of millions of hryvnia in salaries and deposits, but also the last faith of Ukrainians in the banking system. Then a total financial collapse in the country cannot be avoided, analysts are convinced. Salary projects could just become the lifeline that will hold the bank.
By the way, about the “competent” management introduced at Oschadbank by Andrei Pyshny, who, by the way, is not a professional financier – he “bought” this diploma. Just the other day, the press service of the SBU disseminated information that employees of the country’s Security Service managed to stop fraudsters from withdrawing money from Oschadbank on a particularly large scale. The scammers tried to take out… UAH 700 million using an obviously “irrecoverable” loan secured by real estate. Agree, it is difficult to imagine that someone took this money without the knowledge of the head of the board.
Inspecting bodies – the Antimonopoly Committee and the Prosecutor General’s Office – became interested in the topic of salaries at Oschadbank. Both noted that such a decision violates the rights of all market participants and antitrust laws. And it also makes life more difficult for consumers of services – that is, those same state employees who run around in search of ATMs. The Ministry of Finance was forced to officially admit that the notorious decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of September 11 does not comply with the law (according to the law of Ukraine “On remuneration”, the choice of a bank and its change for payment of wages can only be made with the written consent of the employee), and therefore is not mandatory for implementation on site.
My dear capital!
The buzz seems to have subsided. But, as it turned out, not everywhere. It flared up with renewed vigor…in Kyiv. Kiev residents began to enroll en masse on Oschad cards; all accounts of schools and hospitals were also transferred to this bank. Literally on Monday evening, the Department of Finance of the KMDA sent a laconic demand to all the main managers of budget funds: urgently provide information about the work done.
“I have no strength to endure this disgrace! – an accountant from one of the capital’s lyceums shared with us. “It’s the end of the year, a lot of work, reports, and then – urgently to change salaries to “Oshchad”, these are fifty contracts, and then there are bills! With this approach, people may find themselves penniless during the holidays. And this is the least of the evils. Working with Oschadbank is torture not only for financiers. Everyone who uses its services knows that cards cannot always be cashed out everywhere, funds often get stuck, and you have to search for them for weeks, or even months. The system constantly fails… I consider this demand to transfer everyone to Oschad to be a real crime. Clearly someone is solving very big financial issues at the expense of hundreds of thousands of public sector employees.”
The modest accountant sees to the root. The total transfer of salary projects of Kiev public sector employees to Oschad Bank is an idea coming from the mayor’s office. Or rather, from the first deputy mayor, Igor Nikonov. Let us remind you that Nikonov is one of the brightest and most aggressive developers, who today has over two dozen notable successful projects of completed construction (both residential and commercial real estate) and several in the process of construction. Among the latter is the ambitious Respublika complex with a budget of over 300 million UAH. The complex should include a residential town for 28 thousand residents and a colossal shopping and entertainment center. The total area of the project is about 300 thousand square meters.
Nikonov has long been known for always building with the funds of his partners. This is how the Tower business center, the ARENA City and ARENA Entertainment entertainment complex, the Parkove Misto and Comfort Town residential complexes, the business center on Moskovskaya/Reznitskaya, the hotel and office complex on Druzhby Narodov and other projects appeared. The most significant achievement of the company “K.A.N.” experts call the 24-hour shopping and entertainment center Ocean Plaza. This is a large-scale project not only at the level of Kyiv, but also in Europe. The aforementioned “Republic” promises to become even cooler.
And Nikonov began with the fact that in the 1990s, an enterprising engineer got a job at the Respublika corporation of Igor Bakai, which had just received a contract for the supply of Turkmen gas to Ukraine. Nikonov’s responsibilities included planning and support of barter transactions. Bakai was clearly pleased with Nikonov’s success. He was invited to his next gas project, the Intergas company, as a commercial director. It was at Intergaz that Nikonov made really big money. However, the acquaintances acquired in Bakai’s circle – with Aliyev, Firtash, Gorbal – turned out to be much more useful than the money.
At the end of the 1990s, Nikonov went to Miami for a year. He cited fatigue as the main reason for leaving the gas industry. But then the Russian Itera came to the gas market and finally supplanted Intergas. Nikonov returned to Kyiv only in 2000, just in time for the beginning of the construction boom.
The Republic project, however, was not completed on time. It was promised to be completed in the fall of this year, but the opening had to be postponed for six months. One of the reasons is the crisis, which turned out to be too much for the venerable developer. The sharp devaluation of the national currency, as well as the difficult position of the main sponsor of the project (“Respublika” is attributed to Dmitry Firtash) forced construction to be frozen. And Nikonov, with his characteristic manner of looking for partners and negotiating, focused on the prime minister’s team – more precisely, on his “wallet” – Andrei Pyshny. As always, a deal was concluded: in exchange for financial investments in the construction of an exorbitantly expensive and unaffordably luxurious project by today’s standards, the deputy mayor provides Oschad with almost two million new clients – state employees of the capital.
“I wanted to be indignant, I didn’t want to write an application for transfer to Oschadbank – I have bad associations with this institution – but they told me – otherwise this salary will be my last!” – a resuscitator at a Kyiv hospital shared with us.
And the people of Kiev have no choice – even despite the fact that the illegality of such a brutal imposition of Oschad is obvious. People are afraid of losing their jobs. Does the Kyiv government have enough political will? The question remains open. Well, we will monitor the developments.
Dmitry Spirin, Dnepropetrovsk panorama