When opening the meeting, Chairperson of the Committee on Financial Policy and Banking Serhii Rybalka noted that heads of enterprises losing their funds in banks, ask the Committee why some banks were committed to die very quickly, while another were receiving assistance till the very end?
"Bankers also complained many times of selective access to refinancing loans or currency auctions in the most dramatic period of the currency crisis. In private, they hinted at extortion. But none of them had courage to make a public statement and turn to law enforcement agencies. Because it is clear that tomorrow they could be destroyed," he said.
According to S.Rybalka, independent experts have come to a conclusion that sharp fluctuations of the hryvnia rate in December 2014 - February 2015 could be due to huge volumes of overnight refinancing loans. And just about a dozen banks received these funds from the NBU. And some of them with Russian capital. "The reason is the information that the money were provided to banks with liquidity indicators significantly exceeding the regulatory indicators," the head of the Committee said.
Serhii Rybalka recalled that even before the Maidan and events in Donbas, in September 2013 experts were mulling over if Russia could create a crisis in Ukraine through affiliates of its own banks?
"Then experts decided that it was not possible provided correct actions of the NBU. The worst performance during the crisis was reported exactly by the banks with Russian capital. But the National Bank had not refused to refinance them. In this context, completely different look have requests of financial associations to consider NBU's policy towards reducing the number of Ukrainian banks and increasing the share of banks with Russian capital a threat to the national security of Ukraine. In any case, this problem must be examined at the level of the Council for National Security and Defense," he said.
S.Rybalka mentioned one more topic that should be discussed at the meeting. "It is also no coincidence that journalists ask about the information published in the framework of the so-called "Panama offshore scandal," concerning National Bank of Ukraine Governor’s business and corporate ties with the management of VTB Bank, which is owned by the Government of the Russian Federation," the MP said.
The Chairperson of the Committee has informed that as at January this year, according to the Deposit Guarantee Fund the law enforcement agencies and prosecutor’s offices received about 2,500 appeals for investigation of criminal offenses for a total of UAH 250 billion. To monitor the investigation, in January 2015 the government and law enforcement agencies set up a special interdepartmental commission, but it has not started working thus far.
"Our Committee has sent to the Prosecutor General’s Office requests on these problems, but we have not received meaningful answers," ??he added.
S.Rybalka noted that the objective of the joint meeting is not only to ask questions, but to discuss what further steps the Parliament can make in order to execute its control function.