In recent years, several dozen banks in Ukraine have collapsed. According to social surveys, more than 70% of Ukrainians do not trust banks.
Banks are in the top-5 anti-rating of trust among citizens of our country. Ukrainians trust Russian media, officials, and courts even less than banks. This outcome is, of course, logical, since the banks themselves have created the corresponding reputation. Far from being an exception, but rather a blatant indicator of all the «charms» of the Ukrainian banking system is «Bank Alliance». We have already told you about it in many other materials. This bank, although completely unknown to many Ukrainians, has proven ideal for implementing criminal schemes for laundering dirty money, corruption schemes, and financing terrorism.
The history of «Bank Alliance» began back in 1992 in Donetsk. In fact, it can be considered one of the oldest banks in Ukraine. It was created by local criminal authorities for the purpose of laundering dirty money obtained through criminal means. One of the founders of the bank was the notorious Ukrainian bandit Yura Yenakiyevsky (Ivanyuchenko). In 2010, after Yanukovych was elected President of Ukraine, Yenakiyevsky became one of the key figures – a gray cardinal, organizer, and controller of corruption schemes, the looting of state enterprises, and so on.
Despite the fact that after the Revolution of Dignity, Yanukovych’s entire gang scattered, mostly settling in Russia, Yura Yenakiyevsky did not suffer such a fate. He continues to squander the stolen funds in Monaco, where he lives, as numerous data confirm. But what about the property looted from Ukrainians? Nothing, it remained under the control of the Donetsk group. One of Ivanyuchenko’s assets is «Bank Alliance», which is now used for the dirtiest schemes, as well as for deceiving clients. Moreover, the first branches of the bank, according to the NBU data, began to appear only in 2017, despite the bank existing since 1992. The picture for the public looks different. No one openly demonstrates Yenakiyevsky’s trace in the bank’s affairs, and its owner is listed as Oleksandr Sosis, the founder and co-owner of the insurance company «Aska».
Let’s start with the most important and painful issue for citizens – deceiving clients. If you decide to work with «Bank Alliance», prepare to be scammed. There is a lot of information on the internet about how cashiers did not issue the full amount, hid money, operators gave poor advice leading to losses, and so on. But all this can be attributed to human error. If you take a loan from this bank, you can expect to be left penniless; the bank will take everything from you and even more. To attract clients, «Alliance» uses a standard scheme – it issues a credit card with a limit of 100 thousand hryvnias at 0.0001%. You take the needed funds – repay when possible, it seems there are no problems. But not when you are a client of «Bank Alliance». In fine print in the contracts, it states that if the client does not repay the loan within 45 days, interest is accrued at 38% per annum, and penalty sanctions on the overdue loan at 70% per annum. That is, if you took a 5000 UAH loan from «Alliance», in a year you will owe 10 400 UAH, for example, in PrivatBank, if you took a loan via card, you pay 5% of the amount monthly. Only in case of non-payment, the bank imposes sanctions of 7.2% per month on the debt amount. «Bank Alliance» acts differently – straight to court, squeezing out huge sums. In one case, a person used a credit card and withdrew 6500 hryvnias from it. The bank demanded repayment after 2 months, but already 12 700 hryvnias. And the court sided with «Bank Alliance».
Deceiving clients is far from the main source of income for dishonest bankers. «Bank Alliance» is deeply involved in many dark dealings, for which dozens of criminal proceedings have been opened. The bank has quite a few dubious clients in its portfolio, including the internet resource «Global Money», which finances «DNR» terrorists. Nevertheless, the bank’s involvement with such companies wouldn’t mean much if not for one thing. In 2018, «Bank Alliance» came under the scrutiny of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU). Moreover, it wasn’t about schemes or undermining the state economy. It was much more serious. The SSU suspected one of the main partner-clients of «Alliance», LLC «Zaporizhzhia Titanium-Magnesium Plant». The Zaporizhzhia plant kept all its funds in «Bank Alliance», and that’s no small amount. The total amount on which the court imposed an arrest was more than 360 million hryvnias, almost half of «Alliance»’s entire capital. The criminal proceeding was opened on June 2, 2018, under No. 22018080000000044. According to the Zaporizhzhia Regional Office of the Security Service of Ukraine, from April 2014 to the present, officials of large industrial and energy-generating enterprises in the Zaporizhzhia region, acting intentionally to the detriment of Ukraine’s defense capability, economic and information security, have been assisting representatives of a foreign organization in conducting subversive activities against Ukraine by committing actions aimed at destroying and damaging facilities of important national economic and defense significance for the state, planned and coordinated by these representatives. These funds, in turn, were transferred to the account of «Bank Alliance», where they were successfully laundered. Despite the fact that such schemes caused losses of tens of billions of hryvnias to the Ukrainian budget, and state treason is essentially a particularly grave crime, the investigation has been ongoing for more than 2.5 years, no one guilty has been held accountable, not even taken into custody. At the same time, officials of the enterprise and the bank «settled» the issue with the prosecutor’s office, which in turn allowed the arrest on property and accounts to be lifted. On this fact, the State Bureau of Investigations separately opened a criminal proceeding and is investigating the bribery of prosecutors.
In the same 2018, the Kyiv SSU Office opened a criminal proceeding against officials of «Bank Alliance». As the investigation established, during 2017-2018, officials of JSC «Ukrgasbank», JSC «Alfa-Bank», and JSC «Bank Alliance», acting in prior conspiracy with a number of business entities, in the mode of so-called «group reporting» (conclusion of exchange contracts secured by rights to receive funds / securities based on corresponding counter obligations), committed actions aimed at masking the illegal origin of funds in the amount of more than 86 million UAH, which preceded the legalization (laundering) of income, i.e., committed a crime under Part 3 of Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
In addition to outright scamming clients and committing serious crimes, Sosis’s bank has also left traces in its business activities, not shying away from deceiving state institutions.
In one of the commercial cases being considered by the Kyiv Commercial Court, a state entity – the «State Innovative Credit-Financial Institution» – filed a lawsuit against «Bank Alliance» for the return of 17.3 million hryvnias due to non-fulfillment of assumed obligations. This commercial case began in the summer of 2020, and to this day, court hearings are constantly postponed due to various motions from the parties and third parties. The latest hearing in the Commercial Court in this case took place yesterday, but its results are not yet known.
Despite the huge number of suspicious aspects in the operations of «Bank Alliance», some state structures continue to keep money there and then struggle to get it back. The «Ukrainian Sea Ports Administration» has been unsuccessfully trying for several years to recover 76 million hryvnias in bank guarantees from «Alliance». From the case details, it is known that the «Sea Ports Administration» deposited 114 million hryvnias into the bank’s accounts for the construction of a pier in Mykolaiv. This tender was won by the company «Hydrobud Ukraine», which immediately withdrew 76 million hryvnias from «Alliance»’s accounts without performing the required works. The state body unilaterally terminated the contract, but neither the money nor the performed works materialized. As often happens in our country, the bank shrugs its shoulders, and the contractor’s directors simply hid, so there is no hope of recovering these funds.
In general, there are quite a few lawsuits from state institutions against «Bank Alliance», and they all concern various schemes with bank guarantees. Nevertheless, the same state agencies continue to work with the bank, which has a very dismal reputation and is involved in criminal activities. And everything else is left for journalists and the public to sort out.
