Deputy Head of the National Bank of Ukraine Kateryna Rozhkova has claimed her phone was tapped, she told UNIAN in a comment following publications in several media outlets of contents of her conversations with the managers and shareholders of Platinum Bank.
Rozhkova has said that contacts of the NBU top management with the banks` shareholders and managers is a common practice of supervision, while their publication can adversely affect the condition of a certain bank and the banking system as a whole.
”Negotiations of the deputy head of the NBU, responsible for prudential supervision, with the shareholders and management of the banks are a normal working process, especially in the period of assessment and rehabilitation of the banking system,” said Rozhkova.
”At the same time, I want to turn to law enforcement authorities with a request to check who is and what are the grounds for monitoring my telephone conversations, and who makes them public. Such provocations could adversely affect the condition of a certain bank and eventually the banking system as a whole.”
The deputy head of the NBU recalled that the NBU had been reforming the banking sector. Since 2014, 82 banks have been withdrawn from the market while several banks are deemed problematic.
”With such banks, there is an ongoing dialogue, on a daily dialogue, as well as monitoring of their activities. Since 2014, the regulator together with the shareholders of financial institutions withdrew 10 banks from the `problematic` category. With the shareholders and management of these banks, I personally held dozens of meetings, made hundreds of phone calls, contacted them via Skype and email. These negotiations were not in vain as now these banks continue to operate in the market in the normal mode,” Rozhkova said.
She also noted that she was ready to testify to the investigators of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and other law enforcement agencies on every conversation that she had held with the shareholders and management of banks.
UNIAN memo. In the course of cleansing of the banking system, the NBU in 2014-2015 declared 63 banks insolvent, to be further managed by the Deposit Guarantee Fund. In 2016, the NBU withdrew from the market another 15 financial institutions.
According to the estimates of the DGF, the performance of law enforcers in this field remains poor. As Director of the DGF`s legal department Viktor Novikov said in an interview with UNIAN in October, the fund filed 3,214 reports to law enforcement agencies into financial violations worth UAH 256 billion. 1,100 of the reports are being investigated by the law enforcers, only nine are being prepared for court hearings. Only two hearings have been completed, in which one of the indicted individuals was acquitted.
