It is much better to punish the culprits in the bankruptcy of Delta Bank for increasing the tax pressure on business, Serhii Lyamets

It is much better to punish the perpetrators of the bankruptcy of “Delta Bank” for increasing the tax pressure on business / photo wikimapia.orgThe Deposit Guarantee Fund of Individuals has not filed any lawsuit against the Cargill company as the ex-owner of Delta Bank. For some reason, all legal claims are limited to another ex-owner, Mykola Lagun, and a number of top managers who are currently on the run outside of Ukraine.

Journalist and blogger Serhiy Lyamets writes about this in a column on “Censor”.

As the journalist notes, the publication “RBK-Ukraine” recently recalled the history of the bankruptcy of “Delta Bank”, Mykola Laguna and the American group Cargill.

“Many years have passed, but despite great efforts, billions of hryvnias remain unreturned… Ukraine is frantically looking for funds for defense. 500 billion hryvnias must be found by the end of 2024… In search of a solution, the deputies decided to borrow 216 billion hryvnias, and find the rest through an increase taxes or savings on important expenses,” his analysis reads.

Serhii Lyamets draws attention to the fact that old bank debts are a source of filling the budget. More than 400 billion hryvnias were withdrawn from liquidated Ukrainian banks. There are thousands of cases in the courts, as well as at various stages of investigation, for which it is possible to bring specific persons to justice and return funds to the budget. The problem lies with the law enforcement officers, who have been sabotaging these investigations for several years, but there is also a lack of political will.

“The Delta Bank case is exemplary, because it had everything: huge thefts, criminal schemes, defrauded depositors, and even the involvement of foreign forensic investigators to return funds from abroad. Delta Bank left more than half a million defrauded depositors… at the end of July 2024, the Guarantee Fund lost the court against the owner of the bankrupt “Delta” Mykola Lagun… With variable success, the trials have been going on for years. Numerous victories and losses in court do not solve the main case in any way – the money withdrawn from the bank is not returned.” – he writes.

Serhiy Lyamets emphasizes that the problems are not only with Mr. Lagun. “Delta Bank” had another large shareholder – it was the American group Cargill, which currently conducts business in the Russian Federation.

“I wrote about the Cargill case back in the days when the interim administration was introduced. Subsequently, there were loud statements by the Fund and open criminal proceedings… when the bank went bankrupt, Cargill took “live” money out of it in an extremely ugly way. Later, the Fund stated that it had declared invalid certain agreements related to concluded and started a series of lawsuits, indicated that $100 million worth of assets were withdrawn from Delta Bank due to transactions with letters of credit from the Cargill corporation. But today the Fund has no legal claims against Cargill,” the journalist explains.

According to him, the events took place on the eve of the introduction of the interim administration, which gave reason to believe that “Delta” and Cargill were warned, and they began to save what they could.

Namely, on February 5, 2015, 9 contracts were signed in Kyiv on the assignment of the right of claim, by which Cargill sold the right of claim to “Delta” executed by it. Four Ukrainian companies appeared in the deals: “Illichivsky Grain Port”, “Budbud Illichivsk”, “Yablunevy Dar” and “Tank Trans”. If earlier they were guilty of “Delta Bank”, now they are also guilty of Cargill.

“Since there was no “live” money, such documents were signed. The deals took place without the transfer of real money – they were simply changes in documents, adjustments to the bank’s balance sheets… Cargill received money from Ukrainian companies-clients of the bank, and sold the “air” right itself claims on the letters of credit that “Delta” opened in favor of the American group. It was assumed that due to such rights, Ukrainian companies would have to repay their debts to “Delta” allegedly, because neither the Fund recognized this offset in the prosecutor’s office, not in the courts,” Lyamets reminded.

In his opinion, the state is unsuccessfully “looking” for Laguna, owners like him, their assets and money stolen from the bank. But others – such as Cargill – have somehow been completely forgotten.

“Therefore, there are more than enough facts in the case. There is a reason to bring it to a logical conclusion and return the money… Of course, it would be much better to finish this case and punish the culprits than to increase the tax pressure on Ukrainian business,” the blogger writes.

He noted that in 2021, Cargill lent the government of Ukraine EUR 250 million. And Ukraine’s total debt to Cargill is about $700 million.

“An elegant scheme is emerging. First, Cargill withdraws $100 million through fictitious agreements. Then it lends to Ukraine, and it is forgotten. With the beginning of the “full-scale” operation, the group continues to work in the Russian Federation and pay taxes there… It turns out that the state is happy to rip off honest business, but in at the same time, it is catastrophically underperforming in recovering assets from the owners of bankrupt banks,” Serhiy Lyamets believes.