NABU asks NBU, Rada to introduce new oversight rules for cash FX currency brought into Ukraine

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) will likely be unable to determine how the defendants in the "Midas" case brought a large sum of foreign currency into Ukraine. Therefore, NABU proposes introducing a special accounting form, said the head of the NABU detective unit, Oleksandr Abakumov, who is conducting this case.

"This is the second time we have been faced with such a large sum of money brought into Ukraine in the US Federal Reserve Bank packaging. It's likely that, once again, no one will be able to tell us how they got here," he said at a meeting of the Temporary Investigative Commission on Economic Security, chaired by MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak (Holos), in Kyiv on Monday.

According to him, the US Federal Reserve System records who it sells these funds to. However, neither Europe nor Ukraine does this.

"There is a proposal for MPs and the National Bank to introduce a system that accounts for the import of large sums of cash into Ukraine and tracks who purchases it. This will greatly help prevent such situations," the NABU representative concluded.

The deputy governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, Dmytro Oliynyk, thanked the representative for the proposal.

"We will consider it, and I will report back," he said at the meeting.

Zhelezniak also confirmed his willingness to consider the proposal in the Rada.

He recalled that, in the case of Operation Midas specifically, we are talking about the so-called "white" (not the new "blue") dollars found in Fed packaging, totaling about $4 million.

Oliynyk stated that Ukraine currently has no unique registry to compare barcodes and Fed packaging numbers to determine where these banknotes originated.

"Regarding how the banknotes are handled in general: Currently, eight banks import dollars and euros to Ukraine. Several of them use the currency for their own purposes, while others sell it to banks and other financial institutions," the National Bank representative described the current state of cash currency import.

According to him, billions of dollars are imported into Ukraine, and without a registration system, it is impossible to single out any individual million.