20 July 2023, Thursday, 20:36 810

NBU decides to withdraw systemic Sense Bank from market and proposes Cabinet to nationalize it

Editor: Tetiana Herasimova

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The National Bank has decided to withdraw the systemic Sense Bank from the market and proposes that the Cabinet of Ministers nationalize it.

The head of the NBU Andrii Pyshnyi announced this during a briefing, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

The Board of the National Bank, guided by the norms of the Laws of Ukraine "On the National Bank of Ukraine," "On Banks and Banking," "On the System of Guaranteeing Deposits of Individuals," decided to withdraw from the market a systemically important bank Joint-Stock Company Sense Bank and appealed to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine for the participation of the state in this procedure.

According to JSC Sense Bank, ABH Ukraine Limited (Cyprus) and ABH Holdings S.A. (Luxembourg) are the owners of direct significant participation in the Bank, and a citizen of Russia and Israel Mikhail Friedman, a citizen of Russia and Latvia Piotr Aven, a citizen of Russia Andrei Kosogov are the owners of mediated significant participation.

These individuals are the final key participants in the ownership structure of JSC Sense Bank.

The association of owners of indirect significant participation in JSC Sense Bank M. Friedman and P. Aven with Russia, which is an aggressor country and carried out a full-scale military invasion of the territory of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, their support of actions and policies that threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, inflicts significant reputational risk and has a significant negative impact on the bank's activities.

Thus, the negative impact of reputational risk on the activities of JSC sense bank is indicated in the report of the independent auditor LLC RSM Ukraine for 2022.

The auditor drew attention to the conclusions of the bank's management staff about the existence of significant uncertainty, which may call into question the ability of JSC Sense Bank to continue its activities on a continuous basis.

On the basis of the decision of the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine, the Executive Directorate of the Deposit Guarantee Fund decided to introduce a temporary administration in JSC Sense Bank and delegate the powers of a temporary administrator of the bank.

Interim administration in accordance with the above decision is introduced from Friday, July 21, 2023.

During the interim administration, services for individuals will work as usual, without additional restrictions on the part of the Deposit Guarantee Fund.

Also, payments of legal entities will be accepted without restrictions.

After the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to participate in the withdrawal of the bank from the market, the interim administration will last no more than two days from the day following the day the Deposit Guarantee Fund receives the corresponding decision.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, in April 2022, the NBU agreed on a confidant of Alfa-Bank (Ukraine) Simeon Djankov, who received the right to vote on shares owned by shareholders whose reputation was recognized as not safe.

Currently, Djankov, within his powers, participates in the management of the bank.

In July 2022, Alfa-Bank (Ukraine) decided to rename itself to Sense Bank.

In March 2023, the National Bank announced that it had received a letter from a potential investor, Sense Bank (formerly Alfa-Bank (Ukraine)), but had not received a corresponding package of documents.

At the end of May 2023, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the law on nationalization of the Central Bank, which belongs to the Russian oligarch Mikhail Friedman.