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April 7, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
Ukraine central bank chief Gontareva confirms to soon resign
In early March, Gontareva indicated that she would resign after the next memorandum under the country’s $17.5bn support programme from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been signed and sealed. On April 3, the IMF approved the release of a $1bn tranche to Ukraine under its $17.5bn aid package.
Gontareva, a close business associate of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, has
led the central bank since June 2014. She is its second governor since the Euromaidan protests ousted the regime of former president Viktor Yanukovych, and oversaw the closure of more than 80 banks, many of them due to their involvement in money laundering or for having a non- transparent ownership structure. This inevitably has incurred the wrath of many oligarchs and other wealthy, powerful individuals in the country.
Her resignation on early April 6 came amid another protest by Ukraine’s Azov far-right movement, whose members attempted to block the governor from leaving her home
and vandalised her property. The protesters accused Gontareva of protecting the interests of the Ukrainian subsidiaries of Russian banks. According to the NBU’s media office, the police ignored Gontareva’s request to intervene.
On March 29, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) raided the headquarters of the central bank and seized documents under what they said was a criminal investigation into abuse of power by senior NBU officials in 2015-2016.
In a March interview with the Financial Times, Gontareva admitted that there had been “absolutely incredible pressure” from vested interests she confronted. “I can call it sustained harassment,” she told the paper. “There was absolutely tons of fake information, manipulation, real absolutely evil slander about me personally, about the national bank team.”
Alexander Valchyshen, head of Research at ICU,
a Kyiv-based financial-services group, said the next big test for Ukraine will be whether a new technocratic central bank governor will permit a return to business-as-usual in the commercial- banking sector. The very people who corrupted the banking system and who “still dominate” in politics and the media will both test and influence her replacement.
“Their aim is to soften the current rules on commercial banks recapitalisation and oversight. They are promoting the now-popular narrative that bank lending should fuel Ukraine’s economic growth of at least 7% a year on average over next decade and beyond. I see this as a coded message to green light a return to the business-as-usual that Gontareva fought against,” Valchyshen wrote in a column for bne.