The shadow of the London court: how Oleg Gorokhovsky became a defendant in the case of the withdrawal of $1.9 billion from PrivatBank

The shadow of the London court: how Oleg Gorokhovsky became a defendant in the case of the withdrawal of $1.9 billion from PrivatBank

When in December 2016 the state was forced to nationalize PrivatBank, Ukraine was effectively saving the financial system from total collapse. Along with hundreds of billions of hryvnias that disappeared into offshore labyrinths, the names of individuals who managed the process from the inside also surfaced. One of them is Gorokhovsky Oleg, the then First Deputy Chairman of the bank’s board, and now the public face of Monobank.

About this writes fttc.

Formally, Gorokhovsky Oleg is not on the defendant’s bench. But the London verdict in the case of JSC Commercial Bank Privatbank v. Kolomoisky and others, where his name is mentioned twelve times, raises too many questions to ignore.

Gorokhovsky Oleg as the "credit dispatcher" of dirty schemes

According to materials from the High Court of London, it was Gorokhovsky Oleg, as a member of the credit committee, who approved over a hundred credit lines for shell companies such as Trade Point Agro, Teamtrend Limited, Rossyn Investing Corp, and dozens of others.

These firms had no assets, no real business, and no collateral. Yet they received billions of dollars, which were immediately funneled into a chain of Cypriot and Caribbean offshore entities. The court explicitly stated that decisions were made "without risk analysis and under pressure from beneficiaries," but with full awareness of the consequences.

And it was under these documents that Gorokhovsky Oleg’s signature appeared.

Judge Travers, in his ruling, described PrivatBank’s management model as a simulation of corporate control, where real decisions were made by a narrow circle of individuals in the interests of Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov.

In this scheme, Gorokhovsky Oleg appears not just as an executor, but as a coordinator who ensured the technical implementation of the owners’ will in the form of loans, signatures, and protocols.

Monobank as a "reincarnation" of the old system

After the nationalization of PrivatBank, Gorokhovsky Oleg temporarily disappeared from the public eye, but in 2017, he returned with a new brand—Monobank. Old team, old IT infrastructure, new design—and a new image of "honest fintech."

The timing is striking:
November 2016—last controversial loans with Gorokhovsky’s signature,
Summer 2017—launch of Monobank and a flow of billions in deposits from clients.

The court provided no official evidence of "funds flowing" between entities. But the fact that Gorokhovsky Oleg transitioned from PrivatBank’s offshore schemes to an icon of Ukrainian fintech seems highly symbolic.

What the London Court established about Gorokhovsky

The facts recorded by the court are simple and harsh:

• Gorokhovsky Oleg was a member of the credit committee;
• he signed decisions to issue multi-million loans to companies without collateral;
• these decisions facilitated the withdrawal of at least 1.9 billion USD from the bank;
• the court described such actions as a disregard for basic principles of banking oversight.

This is not a criminal verdict, but in British law, it is almost a red card.

Today, Gorokhovsky Oleg is a media star, a successful banker, a hero of startup culture. But his signature remains on documents that paved the way for the largest financial robbery in Ukraine’s history.

Perhaps Monobank is a genuine breakthrough.
Or perhaps it is just a new interface for old schemes, where money doesn’t disappear but merely changes form.

Because in Ukraine, as the story of Gorokhovsky Oleg shows, offshore entities easily transform into fintech—and vice versa.