Hetmansev: The owners of the liquidated Concord Bank are not returning money to the state

Hetmansev: The owners of the liquidated Concord Bank are not returning money to the state

The funds of the bank "Concord," liquidated due to serious violations, have not been transferred to the state budget of Ukraine. The bank’s owners blocked the collection of funds the financial institution owed the state through a court by prohibiting tax inspections.

This was reported by the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax, and Customs Policy, Danylo Hetmantsev ("Servant of the People"). The Member of Parliament approached the Prosecutor General’s Office with the issue of the "Concord" bank and initiated a meeting of the Temporary Investigative Commission (TIC) of parliament on this matter.

"The license of ’Concord’ bank was revoked by the NBU on August 1, 2023, due to the theft of money from the budget as a result of the notorious misconduct during gambling. The losses amounted to billions. More than a year has passed. And logically, the money should have already been in the budget. But no. The situation is unfolding in the opposite direction," the MP stated.

He added that two years have passed since the offense. However, the criminal case has been closed, and the judges of the Babushkinskyi District Court of Dnipro and the Dnipropetrovsk Court of Appeal denied the tax authorities access to the bank’s documents to collect the debt.

"The collection of taxes, which the state desperately needs, was blocked by the bank’s owners through a court prohibition on tax inspections of fraudsters. Yes, you heard correctly. All taxpayers can be checked, but not bank fraudsters... Soon, the organizers of the criminal scheme will reclaim their losses and even recover damages from the state," Hetmantsev noted.

According to "Opendatabot", the ultimate beneficial owners of "Concord" bank are the Sosyedka sisters - Yuliya Sosyedka and Olena Sosyedka. They hold shares in the liquidated bank: Olena has 56.2% of the shares, while Yuliya has 43.7%.

It should be noted that at the time of "Concord’s" liquidation, its share accounted for 0.17% of the assets of all solvent banks. The NBU noted that the basis for the bank’s liquidation was the systematic violation of legal requirements in the field of preventing and countering the legalization of proceeds obtained through criminal means, terrorism financing, and financing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Prior to this, the NBU fined the bank a total of 60.4 million UAH. Simultaneously with the announcement of the license revocation, the NBU also fined "Concord" an additional 400,000 UAH for not accompanying the transfer of funds with the necessary information about the recipient and the payer (initiator of the transfer).