Court confirms lawfulness of NBU decision to remove bank Unison from market

Higher administrative court of Ukraine on February 14, 2017 confirmed the lawfulness of the decision of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to place Bank Unison (Kyiv) to the list of insolvent banks, the central bank has reported.

As reported, the NBU late April 2016 placed Bank Unison to the list of insolvent banks in connection with the non-transparent ownership structure.

According to the NBU, as of January 1, 2014 shareholders in the bank were two companies registered in Lichtenstein - IDP Capital Ltd. (82.5% of shares) and MCHL Finance Ltd. (17.5%). The bank did not disclose information about these companies, explaining it that participants of each company were over 10 people with up to 10% of shares each.

In November 2014, the bank's ownership structure changed and 11 companies became shareholders in the bank. Information about the new shareholders was disclosed to the NBU only when the law toughening requirements to the disclosure of this information took effect in March 2015.

At moment when the bank was placed on the insolvent banks list the shareholders in the bank were 11 companies registered in Cyprus and none of them held more than 10% of shares in the bank. Each company had one ultimate beneficiary. Some of them were or are members of the supervisory board of the bank.

The NBU said that top managers of the bank from the middle of 2015 said that they bought the bank from the previous owner as the latter did not have a chance to do business in Ukraine. The packages for approving the purchase of the bank's shares were several times submitted to the NBU, but the regulator banned the purchase of shares, as the financial state of the petitioners did not meet the legislative requirements. The sources of origin of their funds were not properly confirmed.

In June 2016, Kyiv's district administrative court confirmed the lawfulness of the decision of the NBU to place bank Unison to the list of insolvent banks. Kyiv's administrative court of appeals on August 2, 2016 upheld the lawfulness of the decision.