Ihor Kolomoisky (Photo:Микола М’якшиков / Укрінформ)
The former owner of PrivatBank and the
scandal-plagued billionaire, Ihor Kolomoisky, met the Russian full-scale
invasion in the Menorah center, a cultural and business center he’d built for
the Jewish community in the city of Dnipro in eastern Ukraine. He spent most of
his time there in the first months of the war.
“He was sure that it is the safest place in Ukraine,” an official from the office of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who wished to remain anonymous, told NV .
“Russians would never hit it.”
And so far, Russian troops really haven’t hit the Menorah center in the ten months of the war, though the city of Dnipro has been struck by missile attacks many times. Kolomoisky got lucky there. But he has had notably less luck in business this year.
Without his core assets
On the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kolomoisky’s fortune was estimated at $1.9 billion. But after his shares in Ukrainian energy operators Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta were nationalized, the estimation of his fortune dramatically plummeted – to $850 million, according to the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine.
Shurma Rostyslav, deputy presidential chief-of-staff, lobbied for the seizure of the billionaire’s assets in favor of the Ministry of Defense. He is responsible for the economic strategy of the country, a source in Presidential Office has revealed.
Another anonymous source in the Zelenskyy administration stated that Kolomoisky was punished for “delaying shipments of fuel for military purposes” by his companies.
There was no one willing to protect his interests, as no one speaks for him in the Presidential Office: neither the President himself, nor chief-of-staff Andriy Yermak, nor deputy chief-of-staff Serhiy Sherif.
The acrimonious relationship between the oligarch and the president he once worked with (when Zelenskyy was still just a comedian) culminated even in rumors that Zelenskyy had stripped Kolomoisky of citizenship, though the administration denied that it had.
The billionaire focused on litigation. He is trying to win back PrivatBank – the bank he lost after the discovery of a $4.5 billion fraud, which authorities say was orchestrated by Kolomoisky and his partners. Currently, the Cypriot companies of Kolomoisky and his business partner Gennadiy Boholyubov have sued over the nationalization of Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta. In December, one of them – Littop…
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