Page 60 - BNE_magazine_10_2019 kolomoisky

60 Opinion bne October 2019
Ex-NBU governor Valeria Gontareva's dacha was burnt to the ground in an arson attack on September 17. KYIV BLOG:
Zelenskiy's honeymoon with foreign investors is over as NBU ex-governor Gontareva's dacha burns
Ben Aris in Berlin
Ukraine’s honeymoon is over. At least as far as foreign investors are concerned. The world awoke on September 17 to the news that the dacha of former National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) governor, and by far Ukraine’s most successful reformer to date, Valeria Gontareva had been burnt to the ground after someone tossed a Molotov cocktail into it in the small hours of the night before.
The arson attack is the latest in a string of attacks on the former central banker, her family and the bank she nationalised, PrivatBank.
A video showing the house on fire was widely circulated on social media but taken down again by the poster within hours as Kyiv scrambled to contain what is by far the most damaging blow to the investment image of the newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s administration.
Gontareva emailed a statement to the press in the morning from her hospital bed in London where she is recovering
www.bne.eu
from a suspicious hit and run accident in which she was knocked down by a car on a pedestrian crossing. Police are investigating that incident and suspect foul play.
"Dear colleagues, our house near Kyiv in the Horenichi village was burned. They threw a bottle of flammable liquids through the fence. The house was completely burned down. The firemen did not manage to extinguish it!!" Gontareva said
in an email to the press.
A week earlier the car of her daughter-in-law was similarly torched when someone poured gasoline over her Audi parked outside her apartment and set it on fire in the small hours. Gontareva’s apartment in Kyiv was also raided by police last week for unexplained reasons.
“No one knows who these guys are!” Gontareva told bne IntelliNews in an email. “And now they accuse me of treason!” Investigators have tied her to a corruption investigation at the state arms export agency Ukroboronprom, which had dealings