Vladimir Stelmakh: father of the Ukrainian “banking mafia” PART 1

All the years of its history, the National Bank of Ukraine was actually a private shop of clans, a tool for managing the banking and financial system of the state in its own interests. And for more than 15 years, the true owner of the NBU was Vladimir Stelmakh, the all-powerful “Grandfather,” whose trusted people still sit in his offices. And it is to him that all questions about why Ukraine has always suffered from financial crises much more than other countries should be addressed.

Vladimir Stelmakh. Excursion into the “totalitarian past”

Long before a simple rural accountant, Viktor Yushchenko, became the president of Ukraine, his fellow countryman Vladimir Stelmakh, also a simple rural accountant, made a luxurious career in the State Bank and Vneshtorgbank of the USSR. But even in those days, it was incredibly difficult even for very talented people to get to the top from the very bottom, without protection and patrons. But Stelmakh still carefully preserves the sector of his dizzying success, along with other secrets of his life.

So, Vladimir Semenovich Stelmakh was born on January 18, 1939 in the village of Aleksandrovka, Velikopisarevsky district, Sumy region. As a rule, few people pay due attention to the early period of his biography, but in vain! After all, here’s what’s interesting: instead of going to the army for 3 years (or the navy for 4 years) at the age of 18, Volodya Stelmakh somehow ended up in the village of Kondratovka, Gorlovsky district, Donetsk region, where he entered a mining school. At the end of which, in 1959, he worked for six months as an electric freight locomotive driver at the Kondratovka-Novaya mine, and then returned to his native village. It should be noted that in those days people even with flat feet or a pair of torn toes were shaved into the army, and many questions arose for those who did not serve. It’s interesting that Vladimir Stelmakh answered these questions to his fellow villagers back then?

The next entry in his biography is his studies at the Lviv Accounting and Credit College (now the Lviv Institute of Banking). But here’s the strange thing: it lasted from September 1960 to April 1962. Two years, even taking into account the mining school behind you, is not enough, and who gets their diplomas in April?

However, already in May 1962, Stelmakh got a job in the regional center of Romny (Sumy region), as a credit inspector in a branch of the State Bank. By the standards of his native village, he had already become a popular man, but he didn’t stop there. He entered the Kiev Institute of National Economy (now the Vadim Getman National Economic University) in absentia, and quickly climbed the career ladder. Since May 1964, Stelmakh has been a credit inspector in the city department of the State Bank; since November 1964, he transferred to the regional center as an economist at the Sumy regional office of the State Bank of the USSR, where from February 1967 he took the place of head of the industrial lending department. And two years later he was transferred to Moscow, to the department of the State Bank of the USSR, to the position of head of the department of lending for the engineering industry. The fact that someone was pulling it can be seen with the naked eye. But who? It is clear that not an uncle-agronomist, but someone who had access to Moscow, or even worked in Moscow – because Stelmakh’s career did not stop there.

Let’s look again at the milestones of Vladimir Stelmakh’s youth:

• 18 years old – after serving in the army, a strong rural guy for some reason went to the Donbass, studied at a mining school, but worked at the mine for only six months and returned home.
• 21 years old – a failed miner-collective farmer went to study as an accountant all the way to Lvov, where he allegedly received a technical school diploma in less than 2 years, and in April.
• 23 years old – Stelmakh gets a job at the State Bank branch in Romny (far from home), and suddenly someone gives his career as a bank employee a head start.
• 25 years old – Stelmakh is transferred to Sumy, to the regional department of the State Bank, where he quickly rises to the head of the department.
• 30 years old – Stelmakh is transferred to Moscow, to the department of the State Bank of the USSR, as head of the department.

There are several conflicting versions regarding the identities of Vladimir Stelmakh’s mysterious patrons. Most reliable sources Skelet.info they claim that Stelmakh owed his career to the parents of his first wife, information about whom he always hid in every possible way (it is only known that they had a daughter, who now lives in Moscow). However, for a long time Stelmakh was silent about his second wife, Olga Mikhailovna Stelmakh, and only very recently it became known that her own son (and stepson of Vladimir Stelmakh) is the scandalous journalist and deputy Igor Lutsenko. According to other information, at the level of rumors, Stelmakh allegedly did not study at any mining school, but “wasted time” and agreed to cooperate with the KGB – which allegedly ensured his career and even subsequent work abroad (for which he made “edits” in his biography). Finally, quite rumors claim that young Stelmakh had patrons from among, let’s say, his friends from a club with specific interests.

And yet, no matter who promoted Stelmakh to the leadership of the State Bank, his protégé was not at all an obliging mediocrity. Everyone recognizes that Vladimir Stelmakh has the talent of a virtuoso of financial transactions and the core of a tenacious owner. Moreover, this man, who worked for almost 30 years in the Soviet State Bank, in an absolutely planned economy, already in the early 90s showed the instincts of a financial shark of capitalism. But he turned all these talents to the benefit not of the state, but of himself – very often to the detriment of Ukraine and Ukrainians. Damage amounting to billions…

But let’s continue to study Stelmakh’s Moscow career. She slowed down somewhat in the management of the State Bank of the USSR, where Stelmakh was “stuck” for a whole decade, heading various departments in turn: lending to the engineering industry (since 1969), lending to collective farms (since 1970), the credit planning department of the economic planning department (since 1973 about 1977). After which Stelmakh “disappeared” for two whole years: his biography only states that at that time he studied at a special faculty of the Moscow Financial Institute (now the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)), receiving a specialty in “economist of international economic relations.” But it is not mentioned where and by whom Stelmakh worked at that time – or did an almost forty-year-old family man, already accustomed to the lifestyle of a high-ranking boss, live for two years on one scholarship? But at the same time, the question again arises: who hired Vladimir Semenovich to such a prestigious special faculty, where there was a huge competition among relatives and protégés of Soviet bosses? And who then arranged for Stelmakh to be transferred to work at Vneshtorgbank of the USSR, to the position of deputy head of the foreign credit department?

Finally, in February 1981, Vladimir Stelmakh went on a large business trip abroad for several years: as an economic adviser to the Cuban government. At that time, leadership work abroad was incredibly prestigious, practically the only opportunity to live abroad “like in the movies.” The place (country) of work was of great importance: one could only dream of Western Europe, but Africa was considered almost an exile. Cuba, being a kind of socialist tropical resort, was somewhere in the middle: a wonderful place for a carefree life, but unpromising for those who wanted to “splurge” or start some kind of their own small illegal business. And is it true that it was possible to transport cigars and rum from Cuba? That’s how they were sold in Moscow stores anyway.

It seems that Stelmakh’s mysterious patron did not have enough influence to send him to head the trade mission to Germany or at least to Finland. And in 1985-86 and something happened that first transferred him from Cuba to Vietnam (obvious disgrace, although with a very high salary in “checks”), and then completely returned Stelmakh back to Moscow, back to the management of the State Bank of the USSR. And not even to the old positions of department heads, but with a demotion – to their deputies. Either Stelmakh advised the President of the National Bank of Cuba something wrong, or he got caught in some kind of fraud, or maybe his mysterious patron lost influence – this remains unknown. The list of possible reasons should also include the cooling of Stelmakh’s relationship with his first wife, which could lead to disfavor from her relatives. However, it could have been the other way around: the reason for their divorce was the loss of the wife’s relatives of their previous position.

And as a result, Stelmakh was forced to work as a deputy in the management of the State Bank (Central Bank) of the USSR from April 1986 to March 1992, without any visible prospects for new career growth. And after the abolition of the union administration in the spring of 1992, Stelmakh was not invited to work in the Russian one. Therefore, the 53-year-old “professional” returned to his homeland, to the already independent Ukraine, where he immediately joined the board of the National Bank.

Vladimir Stelmakh. Owner of the NBU

Vladimir Stelmakh was often called the “godfather” of Viktor Yushchenko – they say, he allegedly contributed to the fact that his fellow countryman, the same “brilliant accountant from the village,” rose from the ranks and took the place of the head of the National Bank (NBU). In fact, this is not so, because until 1992 these two titans of the Soviet banking economy did not intersect at all. When Viktor Andreevich was pulled out of the Ulyanovka savings bank (Sumy region) up to Kyiv in 1985, Stelmakh had already been fooling the Castro brothers in Cuba for 4 years. When Yushchenko in 1990 became deputy chairman of the board of bank “Ukraine”, created purely by Kyiv officials of “Agroprombank”, Stelmakh sadly sorted through financial statements in Moscow – and had never heard of any future “Ukrainian messiah”. Yushchenko’s real “godfather” was Vadim Getman, Stelmakh joined their company only in the early 90s, but immediately began to dominate it…

There is an opinion that Stelmakh was invited to Kyiv by the first chairman of the NBU, Vladimir Matvienko, who left his brainchild in March 1992, but thus left “his man” there. Matvienko employed Stelmakh in order to count on his help in the future – and perhaps this was the key to Matvienko’s further success as a banker (in particular, the founder and owner of Prominvestbank).

After Matvienko’s departure, the backbone of the leadership of the NBU and the Ministry of Finance in the 90s was the team of JSCB “Ukraine”: Hetman, Yushchenko, Kovalenko, Kravets, Mityukov, and the future scandalous bankers Viktor Gribkov and Igor Frantskevich worked with them. All these were local personnel, from the banking structures of the former Ukrainian SSR. But Stelmakh, who arrived from Moscow, fit perfectly into their team – in every sense of the word. Suddenly it turned out that his twelve years of experience as an adviser and deputy at the level of Moscow and abroad could be effectively applied in the NBU, on inexperienced “natives” – who only yesterday moved from their Zadryshchinsky to the republican center to work in Agroprombank, which provided loans to collective farms. Compared to them, Vladimir Stelmakh really looked like an experienced mentor – and he took full advantage of this opportunity!

In 1993, with the beginning of the “great experiments” in the Ukrainian economy, the roles in this team were distributed as follows: Hetman resigned from the post of head of the NBU to the very important position of chairman of the committee of the Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange (UMEX), he appointed Viktor Yushchenko (his former deputy at Bank Ukraina), but Vladimir Stelmakh became Yushchenko’s first deputy. But all his life Viktor Andreevich was soft clay, from which his mentors molded everything they wanted: “an outstanding banker”, “the best prime minister”, “a patriotic president”, “a European integrator”, etc. Therefore, during Yushchenko’s tenure as head of the NBU (1993-99), the question arose: who controls Yushchenko himself, and ultimately the NBU and the banking and financial system of Ukraine?

Three centers of influence have developed around Yushchenko: his longtime mentor Hetman, his new mentor Stelmakh, as well as a “pro-Western coalition” consisting of former Soviet and former Ukrainian representatives of diplomatic services and trade missions – through which the Americans reached Yushchenko. And it is possible that the murder of Vadim Hetman in 1998 was a consequence of the struggle of these centers. After all, although it was completely blamed on the perpetrators (the Kushnir gang), later speaking only about the “Donetsk trace,” many could have been interested in Hetman’s murder, including Stelmakh, who from that moment became practically the dictator of the NBU, its master. By the way, this is not a hyperbole about Stelmakh’s dictatorship: he created a rigid vertical of power in the National Bank, which revolves around him. Sources Skelet.info they said that Stelmakh demanded that department heads coordinate all important decisions with him, even if he was on vacation at the resort at the time.

Three facts from the sad chronicle of the Ukrainian economy speak eloquently about the “achievements” of Vladimir Stelmakh in the 90s. Firstly, this is the hyperinflation of 1992-94, in which Viktor Yushchenko, Vadim Getman, Vladimir Stelmakh, Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Pinzenyk, prime ministers Kuchma and Masol were directly involved. Inflation did not arise on its own, but was a consequence of specific actions taken by these high-ranking officials. Among them: the NBU issue of trillions of karbovanets in the money supply (including for transactions through Bank Ukraine), trading in non-cash dollars on the UICE, double exchange rates, etc.

Secondly, during this period the Ukrainian currency (karbovanets) fell approximately 50 times lower than the Russian ruble – and this trend continued for the entire subsequent period. Indeed, we forgot that karbovanets for hryvnia in 1996 changed at the rate of 1 to 100,000, but the Russian denomination of the ruble in 1998 was at the rate of 1 to 1000. For the uninitiated, these figures meant absolutely nothing, but financiers They saw certain shadow processes behind them.

Thirdly, the architecture of the Ukrainian financial system created by Stelmakh turned out to be very dependent on the Russian one: as soon as the ruble fell in the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism), the Ukrainian hryvnia also fell flat on its face, sometimes even without any apparent reason. Was this a coincidence or the fulfillment of a special task from Moscow? This happened for the first time during the 1998 crisis: the default in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) suddenly hit Ukraine with all its might, as if their economies were “paired.” One of the main reasons for this was the launch of an artificial “Ukrainian default” in manual mode, undertaken on the initiative of the leadership of the NBU (Yushchenko, Stelmakh). Holders of Ukrainian bonds were informed that payments on them were being postponed – and the very next day the hryvnia flew down and prices in stores went up. At the same time, Vladimir Stelmakh used this situation to take strict control of the NBU (that is, its own) wholesale sales of currency. However, over a year and a half of the crisis, the hryvnia still fell by almost 2.5 times: in the spring of 1998, the dollar cost 1.87 hryvnia, in the winter it was already 3.42 hryvnia, and by the end of 1999 it was 4.52 hryvnia. This fall was all the more strange (somehow artificial) because the country was in acute shortage of these very hryvnias, which is why a serious crisis of non-payments began. And it continued until the beginning of 2000 – when Yushchenko, who became prime minister, began to generously pay off all debts from money printed by the National Bank, in which Stelmakh was already acting as chairman, with the approval of the Minister of Finance Mityukov (from the team of Bank Ukraina). And this already clearly resembled part of a large political conspiracy.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.info

CONTINUED: Vladimir Stelmakh: father of the Ukrainian “banking mafia” PART 2

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