Ukraine's Deposit Guarantee Fund recovers about $44 mln from U.S. accounts of Prominvestbank
Ukraine's state budget has received about $44 million belonging to Prominvestbank – withdrawn from the market at the onset of the full-scale invasion but frozen for several years in the United States due to litigation, the Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF) reported on its website.
"The Fund proved that the funds held in Prominvestbank's correspondent accounts belonged to the state of Ukraine, secured their release from sanctions-related blocking, and returned about $44 million to the bank. The Fund then transferred these funds to Ukraine's state budget in accordance with the National Security and Defense Council's decision," the statement said.
The Fund specified that this amount equals UAH 1.835 billion.
As reported earlier, on February 25, 2022, the National Bank revoked the licenses of and initiated the liquidation of Prominvestbank, owned by the Russian state corporation VEB.RF, and the International Reserve Bank, owned by Sberbank of Russia. In May of the same year, the NSDC decided to forcibly confiscate the shares of these banks. Accordingly, the DGF replaced the Russian banks' parent entities in the creditor register with the state of Ukraine.
During the liquidation of Prominvestbank, it was established that the bank held $2 million and over EUR 36.6 million in correspondent accounts at the Bank of New York Mellon (the United States). In 2022, those funds were frozen by the U.S. side due to sanctions imposed against the bank as a subsidiary of Russia's VEB.RF.
As DGF Managing Director Olha Bilai explained to Interfax-Ukraine, an additional complication arose from claims filed by U.S. citizens whose relatives were killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. They demanded compensation using Russian funds, arguing that Russia had financed the Taliban.