The total amount of money sent to accounts of Ukrainian banks under liquidation in 2019 totaled UAH 9.5 billion, including UAH 7.7 billion from the sale of assets, which is 39.7% more than a year ago (UAH 6.8 billion), the Deposit Guarantee Fund said on Tuesday.

"Now we can state the end of the period of liquidation of the consequences of the banking crisis and the transformation of the Deposit Guarantee Fund into a partner of healthy banks," the Fund said.

At the same time, the Fund reported that in 2019, it paid more than UAH 11 billion on loans that were raised during 2014-2017 at the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and the Ministry of Finance at the rate of 9.9-14.0% per annum.

"This year the NBU was paid UAH 1.5 billion (including UAH 8 million of interest), the Ministry of Finance received UAH 9.62 billion out of turn (UAH 9.12 billion of the principal of the debt, UAH 505.6 million of interest)," the Fund said, adding about the full repayment of debt to the NBU.

In addition, in January 2020, the Fund plans to pay an additional UAH 2 billion ahead of schedule to the Finance Ministry.

According to the report, the main focus of the Fund next year will remain payments to depositors of insolvent banks, which this year amounted to about UAH 800 million. Another vector will be the restructuring of the regulator's debt obligations – UAH 49 billion in the form of bills and more than UAH 67.44 billion of interest.

In addition, the Fund said that since the beginning of the banking crisis, the liquidation of about 40 banks out of 95 has been completed. By 2021, it is planned to withdraw the remaining banks, except for those for which the courts hear the appeals of their insolvency, as well as for banks in Crimea and the Joint Forces Operation zone, for which the liquidation procedure cannot be completed.

"The most important task that the Deposit Guarantee Fund will continue to work on is the return of assets withdrawn from banks. Lawyers of the Fund and insolvent banks are involved in about 45,000 lawsuits totaling almost UAH 200 billion. In addition, the Fund filed 5,600 applications about alleged criminal offenses totaling more than UAH 400 billion with law enforcement agencies, including more than 400 statements regarding the actions of related parties in the amount of UAH 210 billion," the Deposit Guarantee Fund said, adding that at this stage less than half of the statements reached the court, and judgments of conviction were issued only in 13 cases for the amount of UAH 414,500.