A total of 82 banks removed from the market in the period when Valeriya Gontareva worked as governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) were involved in money laundering or simply did not have assets, Gontareva has said.

"In fact, do not have regrets about those 82 banks we removed from the market, no matter how painful it was. Twenty of them were simply involved in money laundering, and the rest were without assets, as they had been stolen from depositors," she said on ICTV channel late on Sunday.

Gontareva spoke about VAB Bank and bank Financial Initiative, which belonged to businessman Oleh Bakhmatiuk as an example.

"On one had Mr. Bakhmatiuk owes UAH 37.9 billion to the banking system and the NBU, including UAH 21 billion to the Individuals Deposit Guarantee Fund, almost UAH 11 billion to the NBU and UAH 5.3 billion to the Ukrainian banking system, state-run banks. This is more than the recent tranche we received from the IMF [International Monetary Fund]. Some 90% of the funds in this bank were given personally to the businesses of Mr. Bakhmatiuk, who has not paid them back, and the Deposit Guarantee Fund has paid UAH 15 billion on guaranteed deposits today," she said.

She also said that the former owner of bank Mykhailivsky Viktor Polischuk owes UAH 23 billion to banks and the Deposit Guarantee Fund.

She said that the Deposit Guarantee Fund today has sent 3,246 applications for UAH 248 billion to law enforcement agencies.

"I want that all owners of these banks know that in April 2015 the Verkhovna Rada passed the law on responsibility of not only managers of banks, but the responsibility of shareholders of these banks," she said.