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The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) searched the premises of the National Bank of Ukraine and the home of one of its employees on October 21. No detentions were made and no suspicion notices were served to anyone. We have seen this movie before: in 2019 we started to report on corruption at the National Bank of Ukraine.
According to NABU, the searches were conducted with a warrant issued by a court and were supervised by the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The National Bank is currently operating in the normal fashion. Once the procedural actions are completed, the National Bank will comment further. The Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine Andriy Pyshnyi informed that, according to the court decision, the case under investigation does not pertain to the activities of the National Bank or to the duties of the Governor himself. He is continuing to work as usual. Several information outlets reported that, as part of the searches, the offices of Governor Pyshnyi, as well as his private residence, were searched and that two of his personal mobile phones were confiscated by investigators. NABU has not confirmed that. As for media reports stating that, due to current events, the Governor had handed in his letter of resignation for health reasons, the National Bank said no such letter exists.
According to Ukrainian lawmakers, the searches are linked to Operation Forrest Gump – the NABU investigation into the state-owned Sense Bank announced in August. As part of this investigation, investigators allege that a group took control of the bank and pushed 150 million hryvnia of laundered money through it. This money was then used to post bail for a suspect in the high-profile Energoatom case. According to Meduza, the former deputy head of the Presidential Office Iryna Mudra and other suspects are accused of using those funds. Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the parliamentary finance committee, demanded Pyshnyi’s resignation over the Sense Bank case back in August. LIGA.net reports that MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak has also linked the searches to the Karpatnaftokhim plant. However, NABU and the National Bank of Ukraine have not confirmed any link between the two cases.
Pyshnyi has been the chairman of the National Bank since October 2022, when he replaced Kyrylo Shevchenko, who was charged by NABU in a separate case involving alleged embezzlement at state lender Ukrgasbank. According to Ukrainian press reports, Shevchenko was declared wanted in October 2022 and subsequently applied for asylum in Austria. He says he is the victim of political persecution, and he is being tried in absentia.
CDM was reporting on corruption at Ukraine’s central bank as early as 2019, well before these searches. Valeriya Gontareva, the Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine from 2014 through 2017, was alleged, according to complainants to the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office, to have set up a scheme to launder money through the sales of government bonds and, in the process, to siphon off kickbacks in the form of 10% to 15% of the central bank’s refinancing loans to the country’s banks. In reports dated October 21 and October 22, 2019, CDM examined the allegations of corruption involving Valeriya Gontareva and described the campaign of the Western press to portray her as a victim of corruption while at the same time inviting her to speak in Washington, D.C., at the request of U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur. In a report dated October 24, 2019, CDM relayed Ukrainian press reports that Gontareva had purchased a house in London for about 23 million pounds, or roughly $30 million in U.S. currency. How did a civil servant of Gontareva’s station manage to amass such a sum? That was the question that CDM asked in that report. A fire occurred at Gontareva’s home on the outskirts of Kyiv on September 17, 2019 while she was speaking from London. That event was reported on by Tsarizm.
It’s worth noting that the former head of the National Bank Gontareva does not recognize any wrongdoing on her part and believes the current cases against her are a result of political persecution. According to Ukrainian press reports, she has not been charged with any crimes as the investigations into her and her business partners are currently ongoing. Gontareva has refused to travel back to Ukraine to answer the questions of the investigators. Again, we stress that none of the above is connected to the current case. However, what is connected is the fact that the National Bank of Ukraine, which is at the center of how the Western money is channelled through the government, has now seen one former governor charged by NABU and another become the subject of prosecutors’ inquiries. NABU’s door is once again open.
The case also has significant implications for international governance of Ukraine’s sovereign debt. The National Bank manages Ukraine’s international reserves and its dealings with the IMF. The West also treats anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine as a key criterion in accession talks with the European Commission. NABU and SAPO, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, have been in an uncertain position: in 2025, in the face of protests, President Zelensky signed a law placing both under the Prosecutor General, and had to backpedal under pressure from Brussels. The searches also follow the Energoatom scheme, a massive money-laundering case that brought down Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, and recordings implicating Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko in a protection racket for call centers engaged in scams.
If you are a holder of Ukrainian sovereign debt, hold UAH, or have exposure to the banks, this is a matter for you to monitor as a governance flag. The searches are as yet thin on facts. There are no detentions, no suspicion notices have been published, and the Governor says the case concerns neither the bank nor his duties and that nothing was found against him or bank staff. That said, the Shevchenko and Sense Bank cases set a precedent of sorts and thus it would be sensible to monitor (i) any suspicion notices issued to National Bank officials; (ii) Pyshnyi’s status; (iii) the details of the searches as unveiled by NABU and the National Bank; and (iv) the views of Brussels and the IMF on this development. This is analysis, not investment advice.
CDM was reporting on corruption at Ukraine’s central bank in 2019, and we will keep following this one wherever the evidence goes.
