Stepan Kubiv: the father of the Ukrainian economic crisis
Those who pushed it there themselves are promising to pull Ukraine out of the economic abyss. Once upon a time, the current ex-Deputy Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv headed the National Bank, and through his actions launched a mechanism for the fall of the hryvnia, which immediately led to rising prices, a decrease in the purchasing power of Ukrainians, and a decrease in the standard of living in the country. If this was a consequence of Kubiv’s lack of professionalism, then why did he occupy second place in Groysman’s government and was already responsible for the entire economic bloc? If it was a corruption scam, then why did the Prosecutor General’s Office stop investigating his activities? And in any case, the third question arises: how did Stepan Kubiv buy himself forgiveness and a place in Petro Poroshenko’s team? Skelet.Info will deal with these issues.
Stepan Kubiv. Mathematics and Komsomol: the main thing is to rebuild in time!
Kubiv Stepan Ivanovich was born on March 9, 1962 in the village of Pobednoe (now Mshanets), Zborovsky district, Ternopil region. He didn’t say anything about his parents; perhaps his origins are the most ordinary, so to speak, peasant. At the same time, there were rumors that Kubiv’s ancestors were baptized Jews, and in 2014, some critics of the new government included Kubiv on the list of the “Jewish government of Ukraine” (as they called Yatsenyuk’s first cabinet of ministers). However, they did not provide any evidence.
Nature awarded Stepan Kubiv with two talents: intelligence and understanding the secrets of the world of mathematics. And while his peers were twisting the oxen’s tails, Stepan was enthusiastically doing his homework, writing abstruse formulas in notebooks. Thanks to this, after graduating from high school, he did not join the army, but entered Lviv University. Frank to the Faculty of Mathematics. There, Kubiv showed off not only his mathematical talent: from the very first year, the excellent student began to take an active part in Komsomol work. He began by carrying out various assignments (the standard “novitiate” of a Komsomol activist included some “snitching” on his fellow students), then he became a member of the university Komsomol committee.
Apparently, Kubiv was even more zealous in his Komsomol work than in his studies, not forgetting to establish good connections with the Lviv city committee of the LKSMU and the Communist Party of Ukraine – since immediately after receiving his diploma, he remained at the university not only as a graduate student, but also as the secretary of the Komsomol organization, and also became a member of the CPSU.
And this was in 1984, when the “Andropovism” had just given way to an even shorter period of “Chernenkovism”, and to advance a career in the Komsomol organs it was necessary to sing the praises of the party and Marxism-Leninism with the zeal of Pavarotti. That later they will still remember Kubiva.
When the wind of “perestroika” began to blow in the country, and young and energetic personnel began to be dragged to the top, Stepan Kubiv also quickly reformed – like his colleague, secretary of the Komsomol organization of the Lviv Polytechnic Institute (now the National University “Lviv Polytechnic”) Alexander Shlapak. Yes, that same Shlapak is the future Minister of Finance (2014) and head of the board of the nationalized Privatbank (2016). During “perestroika,” Shlapak moved up the career ladder faster than Kubiv, but he invariably dragged him along with him. When Shlapak was appointed head of the department of the Lviv regional committee of the LKSMU, Kubiv became secretary of the regional coordinating council of Scientific and Technical Creative Youth. When Shlapak rose to the rank of first secretary of the Lvov city committee, and then to the first secretary of the regional committee of the Komsomol, Kubiv became the head of the department of scientific and student youth, and then the head of the organizational department of the regional committee of the Komsomol. Together they participated in the congress of the LKSMU, were members of the audit commission of the Central Committee – and there they became closely acquainted with the first secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee of the LKSMU Sergei Tigipko (Read more about him in the article Sergei Tigipko: Komsomol oligarch covers his tracks).
When the party-Komsomol leadership of the Ukrainian SSR took up commerce, Kubiv quickly found his bearings here too: in 1990-91. he headed the sector of the Lviv regional headquarters of student detachments. In practice, he was in charge of the construction brigades’ cash register, which became the basis of his future business activities. And indeed, before the State Emergency Committee had time to disperse in Moscow and independence had been declared in Kyiv, Stepan Kubiv enthusiastically tore up his Komsomol and party cards and joined the leadership of the regional youth scientific and economic association “Student Lviv” – created with money from the funds of the former regional committee and construction brigade cash desks. There was only one name from the students: this office was the base for several commercial firms, providing them with benefits for “youth and students.” In 1994, it was transformed into the Student Lviv joint venture, and Stepan Kubiv became its director. But not for long: in the same year he went to work at JSC West Ukrainian Commercial Bank (ZUKB).
“Credit” and politics: sleight of hand and the necessary connections
“ZUKB” arose back in 1990, and then the first commercial banks were created with money from the collapsing Soviet system: departments, enterprises, party and Komsomol funds, funds of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB. Therefore, it is hardly a coincidence that the former head of the organizational department of the Lviv regional committee of the LKSMU got a job at ZUKB. Starting from a modest position as a specialist in the planning and economic department, Kubiv by the end of the 90s became acting. Chairman of the Board, and since 2000 Chairman of the Board of ZUKB JSC. What Stepan Kubiv and his bank did in the 90s, crime chronicles do not report, but here is the most interesting, according to Skelet.Infostarted in 2002.
In the spring of 2002, ZUKB increased its authorized capital from 75.087 to 143.549 million hryvnia at the expense of foreign investors. The main one was the Polish Kredyt Bank SA, also created in 1990 – it is possible that it was the foreign “twin brother” of the Ukrainian ZUKB. Since 1999, Kredyt Bank SA began gradually buying shares of ZUKB, in addition, the British-European EBRI and the Belgian KBC Bank NV were among the minority shareholders. At the same time, ZUKB changed its name to JSC Credit Bank, and was actively preparing for a complete sale to the Poles. And through him, funding came from the West for Viktor Yushchenko’s political campaign. The details of this very scandalous story “sank into oblivion” immediately after the first Maidan, when all traces of the participation of Western “institutions of democracy” and foundations in the preparation of the “Orange Revolution” were carefully cleaned up. However, many still remember that this was precisely the cause of the first major troubles for Credit Bank, which befell it from the Lviv Regional Tax Administration, headed by Sergei Medvedchuk, the brother of the head of the Presidential Administration Viktor Medvedchuk (Read more about him in the article by Viktor Medvedchuk. Putin (*criminal)’s godfather guards the interests of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) in Ukraine). Then Kuchma’s team cut off the tails of Yushchenko’s Ukrainian and foreign sponsors throughout the country, and in the Lviv region, Viktor Medvedchuk used the help of his tax brother for this.
Sergei Medvedchuk
Since violations of tax legislation were present in the work of almost all large enterprises in Ukraine, the tax authorities could only come and find them. This is how the Drogobychiv oil refinery “Galinina” of the Western Ukrainian “dairy oligarch” Igor Eremeev (138 million in unpaid excise tax), the enterprise Evgenia Chervonenko “Orlan-Trans” (non-payment of taxes through fictitious loss-making), and “Credit Bank” of Stepan Kubiv. The latter got into trouble not only with taxes, but also with manipulations in the sale of collateral, as well as money laundering through writing off the debts of fake debtors.
The 1st Lviv branch of Credit Bank, headed by Bohdan Dubas, Stepan Kubiv’s trusted man, was then directly attacked by the tax authorities. The attack was provoked by the fact that Dubas headed the Lvov election headquarters of Our Ukraine, and then the presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko – receiving direct financing of election campaigns through his own bank (with the approval of Kubiv). However, at the same time, Dubas was also a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council, and he managed to achieve the creation of a special commission, which began an investigation into the activities of the head of the regional tax administration, Sergei Medvedchuk, for abuse of official powers. In addition, Medvedchuk, as he stated, was repeatedly called with threats by Viktor Yushchenko: they say, I will soon become president and I will deal with you!
The fact that in 2004 Kredyt Bank SA already owned 66.65% of the shares of Credit Bank and was preparing to sell them to the largest Polish PKO Bank Polski also played a role.
In this regard, Leonid Kuchma was asked not only by Viktor Yushchenko and people from his entourage to “stop persecuting foreign investors,” but also by representatives of the Polish government. Thanks to such a powerful defense, Credit Bank was able to repel attacks even from the almighty Medvedchuk and hold out until the end of 2004 – but after the Maidan, all charges against the bank were dropped. Moreover, the new president thanked his assistants: Bogdan Dubas was appointed chairman of the State Mortgage Institution, and then advisers to the head of the Presidential Secretariat, and Stepan Kubiv put his people in the leadership of the tax service of the Lviv region. However, several years passed, and Stepan Kubiv’s bank again became famous throughout the country.
Since 2005, Kredit Bank belonged to PKO Bank Polski, which gradually bought up 98% of its shares, and again changed its name to Kredobank. Moreover, the deal provided for the continuation of the contract of the bank’s management, headed by Stepan Kubiv – somehow the Poles were convinced that it was impossible to find a replacement for these “professionals”. By the way, Sergei Tigipko concluded a similar deal with the Swedish buyers of his TAS-Comerzbank in 2007. Well, PKO Bank Polski agreed and… soon regretted it greatly (just like the Swedes did about Tigipko). Because Kubiv’s “professionals” brought Kredobank to losses and ruin, and this happened in 2008 even before the start of the global financial crisis. The main reason, according to the Polish media, was that Stepan Kubiv was actively creating the so-called. “problem loans” – perhaps embodying some kind of scam. The cover for which was a “weak relationship” between the main office and the bank branches – that is, these “problem loans” were being prepared to be attributed to the “switchmen” managing the Kredobank branches, who, they say, turned out to be unprofessional. Indeed, the structure of the bank went wrong, and the work of the main office and branches was often based on Kubiv’s personal relationships with his subordinates.
“The biggest mistake of the Polish PRO BP was the transfer of management of Kredobank to local management, over which it lost control. A farce reigns in the bank, Kredobank has ceased to be manageable,” an anonymous source from Kredobank itself told the media at the time. Starting in March 2008, the bank stopped bringing profit to its Polish owners; in May of the same year, it began selling off the real estate it owned and cut about 20 branches with the complete dismissal of their workers – while even disabled people were put out on the street, which was contrary to labor laws. In April 2008, the Kiev office of Kredobank was stormed by the tax police: according to its representatives, the bank branch was turned into a conversion center that worked with scammers from the Zhytomyr region – to whom the bank issued a total of more than 80 million hryvnia in cash. And although the tax authorities did not bring any charges against Kubiv himself, he rushed to defend his people. Then Kubiv resolutely declared that the actions of the tax authorities were illegal – and bombarded the president, the prime minister, the National Bank and the parliamentary committee on financial activities with complaints about them. It is interesting that from that moment Stepan Kubiv became an implacable enemy of the tax police – and in the summer of 2016, already being the first deputy prime minister, he categorically advocated the abolition of this service.
Stepan Kubiv
Despite all Kubiv’s attempts to present the problems of Kredobank as temporary or the machinations of enemies, the situation in it worsened day by day. After August 2008, it became clear that the bank needed urgent recovery, which needed to start with a change in its leadership. However, Kubiv himself stopped clinging to his place, and he had good reasons for this. Firstly, Kubiv could no longer manipulate the finances of Kredobank so freely; he came under strict audit by the Polish owners of the bank. Secondly, with the onset of the global crisis, Kubiv’s idea to obtain loans from European banks failed. Thirdly, since this was not Kubiv’s personal bank, he could not withdraw depositors’ money converted into dollars and refinancing the National Bank from it to offshore sites – which at the end of 2008 was actively carried out by many Ukrainian oligarchs who had their own captive banks.
Stepan Kubiv. Maidan and loans: everyone is dancing!
The professionalism of banker Kubiv turned out to be of no use to anyone in 2008, just as in 2009. All he could do was get a job as an assistant professor at the department of marketing and logistics at Lviv Polytechnic. But in 2010, he was invited to the supervisory board of the small bank “Lviv” – also opened in 1990, and in 2006 sold to the Icelandic investor Margeir Peturson. And in the same 2010, Stepan Kubiv changed his political orientation: he left the collapsed “Our Ukraine” and headed the Lviv branch of the “Front of Change” of Arseniy Yatsenyuk – whom he had known since the late 90s, when he worked at Aval Bank. . According to the quota of the “Front”, which went to the parliamentary elections in 2012 together with “Batkivshchyna”, Stepan Kubiv received passing place No. 23 on the BYuT list. And, apparently having no other activities, he actively joined public political activities, transformed himself into a street speaker, and already in 2012 he called on Ukrainians to fight the “internal occupation.” However, not all Lviv residents believed the former Komsomol leader.
Having gotten used to his new role, Kubiv was able to realize himself well during the second Maidan. Together with his fellow deputy Andrei Parubiy (Read more about him in the article by Andrey Parubiy. What the former commandant of the Maidan and the head of the National Security and Defense Council hid) they became the two main commandants of the Maidan. More precisely, Kubiv became the commandant of the capital’s House of Trade Unions seized by protesters (immediately deciding to rent it from the Federation of Trade Unions, where, they say, many corpses from the Berkut and other law enforcement officers “formed”, who then miraculously disappeared), and Parubiy became the commandant tent city. In addition to them, there were half a dozen more commandants on the Maidan: “Svoboda” members Mikhail Blavatsky (known in Lvov as the crime boss Misha-Broker), Ruslan Andriyko, Evgeniy Karas and Eduard Leonov, “Udar” members Sergei Averchenko, Nikolai Katerenchuk. Stepan Kubiv’s main activity was making speeches in between “feeding” the protesters: he took on the functions of organizing food and other supplies, reporting on the purchases of a colossal number of products and disposable tableware. However, there is information that Kubiv (like Parubiy) was charged with theft and embezzlement of funds from the “Maidan cash fund” (surprisingly, where did this cash fund come from? Does the US State Department have any involvement in it?).
The new government, formed at the end of February 2014, compromised itself so quickly that many of its former members were then dragged for interrogation to the Prosecutor General’s Office. And perhaps the most trouble was caused there by the new head of the National Bank, Stepan Kubiv. Why this responsible post was offered to him, a banker with a dubious past and an unimportant reputation, is still a mystery of the behind-the-scenes agreements of the leaders and sponsors (the USA again?) of the second Maidan. But two facts are interesting: firstly, Stapan Kubiv began working in tandem with his old friend from the LKSMU, Alexander Shlapak, who was appointed Minister of Finance. And secondly, Kubiv got used to his new position incredibly quickly, as if he knew in advance what would be required of him and what needed to be done. And he was required to arrange a colossal refinancing of Ukrainian banks.
Kubiv became involved in issues of the Ukrainian financial sector back on February 20, 2014, when, hiding behind the walls of the House of Trade Unions from gunfire and smoke, he enthusiastically studied the quotes of Ukrainian Eurobonds and began broadcasting on Facebook about the imminent default of the Ukrainian economy. It is clear that such information only further worried depositors of Ukrainian banks, who ran to withdraw their deposits and buy “greenbacks”: by the time Yanukovych fell, the dollar was already worth 9.1 on the Interbank Bank. It seemed entirely reasonable that the new Yatsenyuk government decided to help the Ukrainian banking sector. However, it is unlikely that it was not aware that the majority of Ukrainian banks, including those owned by the leaders and financiers of the Maidan, began a grandiose scam: they withdrew the banks’ capital in the form of loans to their own or front companies, bought foreign currency with this money, and sent it abroad .
Later, Stepan Kubiv will be accused of the fact that, while still in possession of confidential information about the IMF’s demand to “let go” of the hryvnia (to stop supporting it at the expense of gold and foreign exchange reserves), that is, understanding the consequences of this step, he decided to make a gift to his old friend (and, possibly, business partner) Nikolai Lagun (more details about him in the article Criminal schemes of banker Nikolai Lagun (investigation)), the owner of Delta Bank, and several other banker acquaintances. Kubiv invited them to be the first to take out a huge refinancing loan from the National Bank (more than 4 billion hryvnia) at 12.61% per annum, telling them that the hryvnia was expected to fall quickly in the near future: this meant not only that inflation would write off debts, but also the opportunity to “earn money” through speculation on the foreign exchange market, using refinancing funds as free capital. And for this, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office, he wanted a kickback in the amount of 25% of the refinancing amount (a billion hryvnia).
At the same time, in February-March 2014, Stepan Kubiv committed two more acts that had a fatal consequence for the Ukrainian economy: he turned on the printing press (only in the last week of February the issue exceeded 5 billion hryvnia), and he stopped repo operations – that is, refinancing banks with securities with the obligation to repurchase them. The latter was not noticed by anyone at all (few people were interested in the details of the banking business), but the cessation of repo operations was a real bomb that blew up the financial sector. The fact is that banks could not steal (turn into loans and withdraw from banks) these securities, in contrast to the monetary refinancing with which the NBU (Kubiv) and the Ministry of Finance (Shlapak) began to generously gift them with the blessing of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk.
Volumes of refinancing of Ukrainian banks by April 7, 2014
Meanwhile, the hryvnia on the Interbank Market began to fall rapidly (to 11.7 per dollar by April 8), but Stepan Kubiv attributed it all to the notorious speculators. The head of the NBU openly lied to journalists and fellow citizens, because he knew very well that street speculators do not control even 5% of the foreign exchange market of Ukraine, and the share of the entire population in foreign exchange transactions (in bank branches, exchange offices and money changers) does not exceed 15%. The remaining 85% of the currency was bought wholesale and taken out of the country by banks and large enterprises.
And the flow of refinancing was increasing: by the time of Stepan Kubiv’s dismissal (June 19, 2014), the NBU had distributed 101.279 billion hryvnia to banks, of which Oschadbank received 30 billion, the rest from commercial banks. At the same time, the leaders in the number of money received were: Privatbank (more than 20.5 billion), Delta Bank (more than 9.5 billion), Ukreximbank (7.6 billion), Nadra (about 4 billion) , Brokbusinessbank of Sergei Kurchenko (about 2 billion), VAB-Bank of the agricultural oligarch Oleg Bakhmatyuk. “The amounts there are colossal. Banks associated with the American sunflower concern and the governor of one of the regions raked in the most,” a source from the NBU told the press at the time. Meanwhile, the dollar was already being bought at 12 on the interbank market, and abandoned bank clients who could not pay off previously taken foreign currency loans staged protests and demanded Kubiv’s resignation. Thus began the months-long “credit Maidan”, which will be dispersed by the National Guard in February 2015.
The consequences of this unfortunate refinancing were catastrophic: the national currency fell by 30%, prices for consumer goods increased one and a half times, fuel became more expensive – which almost disrupted the sowing campaign and put small and medium-sized agricultural producers in bondage, and the real estate market collapsed. Ukraine, led by Yatsenyuk and Kubiv, boldly stepped into a new crisis – one that is still ongoing. By the way, this work of Stepan Kubiv on the collapse of the Ukrainian economy cost the state 165-200 thousand hryvnia monthly – this is exactly how much he taught (with bonuses, travel allowances and indexation) as head of the NBU.
Stepan Kubiv. Girls and daughters: go for a walk, go for a walk!
On June 18, 2014, Prosecutor General Igor Makhnitsky was dismissed (Read more about him in the article Igor Makhnitsky: is there a limit to the shamelessness of the former “Maidan prosecutor”). On the same day, Stepan Kubiv wrote a voluntary statement about his resignation from the post of head of the National Bank, which will be satisfied the next day – only Kubiv himself will learn about this only in the evening, having woken up from a big hangover. The former “Maidan prosecutor” and “Maidan commandant” decided to celebrate their resignation together, but not to wash down their melancholy with “bitter” somewhere in a bar, but by organizing a grand party in a restaurant. There was something symbolic about this: the esoteric head of the National Bank, who had cheated the country out of tens of billions and plunged it into crisis, and the ex-prosecutor general, who did not catch criminals, but closed and ruined cases for bribes, celebrated the end of their successful cases together.
How did you find out Skelet.InfoKubiv and Makhnitsky rented a separate house with a sauna in the country restaurant complex “Lesnaya”, and ordered themselves a rich table with delicacies and very expensive alcohol, as well as a whole minibus of “girls” – that is, prostitutes. As eyewitnesses reported, the “rest” continued until the morning and ended in a loud scandal – a fight between the “big-faced man” (Kubiva) and one of the prostitutes, who allegedly stole 30 thousand euros in cash from him. After they were separated, the “girls” retreated, and Kubiv and Makhnitsky continued their protracted party.
This incident then forced journalists to recall a similar story that occurred on September 19, 2013, when Stepan Kubiv and his old friend Oleg Kanivets (also a member of the BYuT opposition faction) “got drunk” at the Carteblanche cigar club, after which they tried to get into the Office in a drunken state State Treasury (I wonder why?). Security blocked their path, opposition people’s deputies became angry at the “dogs of the regime” and began to yell that they were untouchable people’s representatives, but then… Oleg Kanivets vomited what he had drunk and eaten earlier right at the entrance of the State Treasury. Unfortunately, one of the guards wanted to either help him or take him outside, touched the “sacred body” – and received a crushing hook in the jaw, immediately losing consciousness (he was later taken away by an ambulance). However, the remaining State Treasury security forces withstood a new attack by opposition MPs. Having not achieved what they wanted, they… urinated at the entrance to the State Treasury and, hugging each other, went to fight the regime in another place.
By the way, it is interesting that just a month before this incident, on August 19, 2013, Stepan Kubiv took part in a clash between the opposition and Berkut under the walls of the Kiev City Council (also trying to break into the building), during which, according to his own words, he received a broken rib, liver and spinal injury. He was hospitalized, gave interviews from his hospital bed, and his comrades shouted about “a new crime of the regime”…
After that noisy party with the “girls” Stepan Kubiv disappeared from view for a couple of months Skelet.Info – they even said that he went on the run. As it turned out later, this was not far from the truth: Kubiv was indeed abroad, he went to Nice, but not to improve his failing health, but to purchase real estate. In addition, he could visit his daughter Ulyana in Toronto (Canada), who remained to live there in 2009, after graduating from New College University of Toronto. In 2010, she worked at the Buduchnist credit union (designed to work with the Ukrainian diaspora), in 2011-2012 she became a co-owner of the V&U Very Unique Gifts store, and in 2014 she joined the MEEST Corporation company. For what kind of money would such goodness be given to the girl daughter of a famous Ukrainian banker? Let the reader think.
On August 23, 2014, Stepan Kubiv was detained in the elite Bukovel sanatorium, where he was vacationing (according to information Skelet.Info – again with the girls). But after several conversations at the Prosecutor General’s Office, Stepan Ivanovich changed again: he went to the polls on the list of the Poroshenko Bloc “Solidarity” (No. 59), and became not only a people’s deputy, but also a representative of the president in the Verkhovna Rada (since January 15, 2015). And on April 14, 2016, Stepan Kubiv received chair No. 2 in the new government of Vladimir Groysman, and became the first Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine.
Stepan Kubiv and Vladimir Groysman
One can only guess what this, to put it mildly, worst head of the NBU in the history of Ukraine, could offer or at least promise to the president in order to not only avoid criminal liability for multibillion-dollar corruption, but also take a high place in Petro Poroshenko’s team. Just don’t forget that for the Vinnitsa team he will still remain a stranger who can be sacrificed in an emergency. Well, then it is possible that soon Kubiv’s name may become the next in a series of such corruption sensations as the case of the long-fugitive Alexander Onishchenko (more about him: Alexander Onishchenko: a man with a taste for scandal) or the recently arrested Roman Nasirov (Read about him in the article by Roman Nasirov. Business background of the chief Ukrainian tax officer).
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
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