The Great Escape: How Ukraine’s ninth-richest man slipped out of the country ami…

Ukraine’s ninth-wealthiest man Hennadiy Boholiubov flees the country on a train using another man’s passport. Although he has legal reasons to leave Ukraine due to his age, he allegedly escapes charges of embezzlement and fraud of billions of dollars.

When a Ukrainian billionaire leaves the country on a public train and not on his usual luxury car (civilian planes don’t fly in Ukraine now), the first suspicions may arise. The case of Hennadiy Boholiubov, the 9th richest person in Ukraine by Forbes, reveals that his train ride was the least strange detail of his fraudulent scheme of fleeing the country to avoid potential criminal charges against him.

As a former co-owner of PrivatBank, now the largest state-owned bank in Ukraine, he was a key figure in one of the “loudest financial scandals of the 21st century,” embezzling over $5.5 billion through fraudulent loans and money laundering via PrivatBank.

This came to light as Privatbankbank was nationalized in 2016 and the Ukrainian government had to cover for the misappropriated money. The scheme primarily revolved around issuing fraudulent loans to shell companies controlled by Hennadiy Boholiubov ((other spellings: Gennadiy Bogolyubov/Boholyubov) and his partner Ihor Kolomoiskyi, which were then funneled through PrivatBank’s Cyprus branch and various offshore entities. This created a complex web of transactions designed to obscure the true nature of the funds and make it appear that loans were being repaid.

Boholiubov avoided formal charges or suspicion notices, as opposed to Kolomoiskyi, who is now detained in Ukraine for several criminal proceedings, including fraud and embezzlement of PrivatBank funds.

This makes journalists of Ukrainska Pravda, Ukraine’s leading newspaper, assume that the Ukrainian state still had something against him, as border guards were instructed not to let him out of the country. Ukraine’s ninth-richest man was slyer: abetted by a border guard, he crossed to Poland on a train on 24 June using the lost passport of a 67-year-old man.

Read more

@Ukraine_Report ~ 4rrasoe 🇮🇩❤️🇺🇦🔱