Recently, the media has been regularly mentioning scandals involving the small bank Alliance. The most high-profile of them is related to the bribe that was allegedly given to NABU detectives and SAPO prosecutors on behalf of the bank by Miller law firm lawyer Oleksiy Nosov in the case of Ukrenergo’s loss claims.
In addition, the media wrote about numerous fines from the National Bank for violating financial monitoring rules, failing to fulfill obligations under guarantees to state-owned companies, and submitting false financial statements.
But the bank is still afloat. Why? The reason may lie in a secret patron – Deputy Head of the President’s Office Rostyslav Shurma. Thanks to his close relationship with Pavlo Shcherban – Chairman of the bank’s Supervisory Board – Shurma can repel the NBU’s “attacks” on Alliance, as well as provide protection for the bank before law enforcement agencies.
The real owner
Formally, according to the Unified Register of Enterprises and Organizations, as well as data on ultimate beneficial owners that Alliance Bank submits to the National Bank, the main shareholder (“owner of a significant stake”) of the financial institution is Oleksandr Sosis, the former chairman of the board of Rinat Akhmetov’s ASKA insurance company. However, in reality, the identity of the person who makes truly important decisions in the bank has long been known to the market. This is the chairman of the supervisory board, 40-year-old Pavlo Pavlovich Shcherban.
According to open sources, Shcherban has been working in the banking sector for about 18 years. He started at the Kremenchuk branch of Prominvestbank as a senior economist in the retail lending sector. He then served as head of the dealing operations sector (stock market operations) at the Vladimirskyi scheme bank. After the crisis of 2008-2009, Shcherban headed the dealing operations department at the Yuzhokbank CB of Viktor Yanukovych Jr.’s racing friend Ruslan Tsyplakov.
After the Revolution of Dignity, when Yuzhok was sent to the banking underworld, Shcherban took the position of head of the interbank operations department at another “pocket car wash” – Apex Bank, and after that he worked for a while as head of the treasury at the money laundering bank Standard, which also later went bankrupt. In 2016, Shcherban first joined the Alliance Bank as a treasury dealer, but then moved to Serhiy Tigipko’s Taskombank as deputy head of the treasury.
From mid-2018 to the present, Pavlo Shcherban has had a direct relationship with Alliance – he was deputy chairman and acting chairman. Chairman of the Board, and since August 2021, he has headed the Supervisory Board. At the same time, Shcherban is also a major shareholder of the bank: in July 2023, the Antimonopoly Committee allowed him to acquire more than 25% of the institution’s shares, the deal should be completed these weeks, when the issue will be carried out.
Sources in the banking market are convinced that despite the fact that Oleksandr Sosis has an unconditional majority stake in the bank, real decisions in the structure are made by Pavlo Shcherban. Moreover, he is also a de facto “political roof” that protects the institution both from the regulator’s numerous claims and from the potential interest of law enforcement agencies in the not always “clean” activities of “Alliance”, in particular, related to servicing the lion’s share of the gambling business, and not always legal ones.
Shcherban’s confidence in life is added by nepotism with the Deputy Head of the President’s Office, Rostyslav Shurma. It is Shurma, whom Shcherban probably met about ten years ago while structuring a number of scheme deals, who guarantees the de facto inviolability of the Alliance bank in conditions when other financial institutions would have been removed from the market long ago. Failure to fulfill the conditions under the guarantees, chronic ignoring of the National Bank’s regulations, especially in terms of the level of risk per client, corruption scandals and fines for violating financial monitoring rules – all these factors together should have long ago called for an interim administration on the bank.
However, this “business for its own” is still somehow holding together. According to market participants, Alliance can be a basic scheme bank for shadow flows, as the state-owned Ukrgasbank once was. However, unlike the state financial institution, which was cleansed of corrupt officials and returned to decent work, there is no one to do this at the Alliance.
A handyman partner
What is Shurma doing here – apart from nepotism with Shcherban? It can be assumed that the answer should be sought in Shcherban’s other – much more diversified businesses. For which – oddly enough – Rostyslav Igorovich’s ears stick out.
First, we are talking about the gas production company “Viva Exploration”, which Shcherban formally owns together with geologist Serhiy Dumenko through the Cypriot company IF Exploration Company Limited. According to the relevant media, the company has a license for geological exploration, including experimental and industrial development with subsequent production of oil, natural gas and condensate on the Staromizunskaya area in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, valid until 2033. Before the start of the full-scale invasion, it was planned to restore old wells for oil and gas production. However, the search for wells rich in deposits was not crowned with success. According to financial statements in the YouControl system, the company is showing deep losses – about $1 million at the end of 2023. But why is the company still investing? The answer may be that the real investor in this business is not Shcherban, but his godfather Rostyslav Shurma.
The second interesting asset at Shcherban’s disposal, which may be the deputy head of the President’s Office, is a recently acquired elevator in the city of Khorol in the Poltava region (Alliance Elevator LLC). Despite its relatively small size and the need for reconstruction, Shcherban and Shurma see this business as a start for greater integration into the agricultural industry, since the demand for storing grain and other agricultural products is only growing every year.
A whole cluster of companies in which Shcherban invested are related to the IT business. At the same time, following the example of the founders of Monobank, Shcherban is apparently going to create a multidisciplinary IT team that can serve various areas. The companies mainly specialize in banking products, but they also provide services to retail chains. We are talking about Alliance Digital LLC (IT specialists of the bank were spun off into a separate company), Asidges LLC, APL LLC and Motvel LLC (developments for the banking sector), where Shcherban is everywhere either alone or with IT partners. However, there is little doubt that the high-tech cluster is a good investment and a “success story” for such an experienced investor and statesman as Rostyslav Shurma. His interest in the digitalization of many processes in the economy is well-known. But his constant desire to “sit up” the Vice Prime Minister for Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, is also well-known. And therefore Shcherban’s group is a good start for creating their own digital army.
In several other industries, Shcherban and Shurma are apparently undecided. For example, Tabakos Trade LLC (which is to trade in scrap metal) and Navium Nafta LLC, which will be responsible for importing and trading petroleum products within the country, are empty.
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All this diversity in business interests does not fit into the functionality of the chairman of the bank’s supervisory board, which has been storming for several months. So either “Alliance” is not a priority for Shcherban (which does not seem to be true), or investments in all these motley businesses are pure venture (portfolio investments, when the investor does not influence decision-making, but receives passive income proportional to his share), which may not even be supported by Shcherban himself.
As for Rostislav Yurievich, sources claim that a lot of conflict points have formed around him. For journalists, this may become new topics for investigations, and for law enforcement agencies, new open cases.
