Sytnyk Fears Going After Pysaruk in Case Against Me Because He Used to Work for IMF, Says Oleg Bakhmatyuk

NABU is deliberately avoiding any mention of the prime suspect in the Pysaruk-Bakhmatyuk case НАБУ, while there can be no case without him in the first place. The former owner of VAB Bank, Oleg Bakhmatyuk, said this in an interview to Channel 112., as reported by Ukrainian News.

"NABU has no jurisdiction to investigate cases against businesses in the first place. They only have jurisdiction to investigate cases against category A public officials, that is corrupt officials at the very top. In the case against me, it is Oleksandr Pysaruk, [former] acting governor of the National Bank (because Gontareva was on leave then). Not once in the history of the case have either Mr Sytnyk or people around him or the media named the corrupt top official. There's only talk of a Bakhmatyuk case. What does this suggest? That the oligarch is not an oligarch. So, there's no corrupt official in the picture. Why isn't Pysaruk being investigated? Because he was a ranking IMF employee for three years. This is like telling mom she's bad".

Bakhmatyuk also reveals that it was the NBU that persuaded him to apply for a stabilisation loan for VAB Bank secured by collateral and the owner's personal guarantee to save the bank. One month later, however, the management of the National Bank shut VAB Bank down.

Just as a reminder, the case against Pysaruk and Bakhmatyuk concerns allegations of misappropriation of refinancing extended by the NBU to VAB Bank, which have been refuted by official expert examinations and reports from audits by the Deposit Guarantee Fund. Oleksandr Pysaruk has won in first-instance court against the Anticorruption Bureau and stated that NABU had shown a lack of professionalism and pursued a vested interest by pressing baseless charges.