Ukrainian cbank acknowledges Russia’s VTB unit insolvent

KIEV, Nov 28 (PRIME) -- The Ukrainian central bank has acknowledged a local unit of Russia’s second biggest lender VTB insolvent, the regulator said in a statement late on Tuesday.

“The management of the National Bank of Ukraine has decided to put VTB Bank into the category of insolvent banks to protect interests of depositors and creditors of the bank,” the statement read.

The authority also said that 97% of depositors of the bank, or 59,108 depositors, will receive full compensations of their funds as they do not exceed the insured sum of 200,000 Ukrainian hryvnas, or about U.S. $7,100, per deposit. The households’ deposit insurance fund will redeem 942.7 million hryvnas to the depositors, or about $33.5 million.

In March 2017, Kiev introduced sanctions against all subsidiaries of Russian banks – Ukrainian units of Sberbank and VTB Bank, VS Bank of Sberbank, BM Bank of VTB, and VEB.RF’s unit Prominvestbank, prohibiting all financial operations in favor of affiliated parties, including parent banks.

In September 2018, the Court of Appeal of Kiev arrested shares of local affiliates of VEB.RF, Sberbank and VTB Bank under several cases of companies owned by Igor Kolomoisky. The decision was made in the framework of fulfillment of an earlier ruling by the arbitration court in The Hague to order Russia to compensate for losses arising from separation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Earlier on Tuesday, VTB said in a statement that actions of Kolomoisky against VTB’s Ukrainian unit were in fact an attempt of an illegal takeover. The Russian bank also thinks that Ukrainian courts are delaying consideration of VTB’s complaints against asset arrests in an ungrounded way. VTB does not rule out a possibility of collecting the funds it spent to buy the bank, which became its Ukrainian affiliate, from Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko in court.

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