Bereza Igor Vladimirovich
Official biography
Born on September 22, 1973
1995 — graduated from the National Agrarian University (specialty Agricultural Management) and qualified as a foreign economic activity manager
Since 1996, he has worked in various banking institutions, holding positions ranging from category 1 economist to department head
1999 — received the degree of Candidate of Economic Sciences
Since 2001, he has worked at Citibank as Head of the Currency Control and Foreign Exchange Operations Division, as well as the Corporate and Legal Standards Departments, and later — Internal Audit, and the Complex
Since 2013 — Member of the Management Board of Citibank
June 2015 — Director of the Financial Monitoring Department of the NBU
September 2020 — resigned from the NBU Financial Monitoring Department
Mr. Bereza is married and has two sons.
In 2014, Bereza’s income amounted to UAH 852 thousand, all of which was received as a salary. He owns a land plot of 1213 square meters, a residential house of 312.5 square meters, an apartment of 36.8 square meters and a Mitsubishi Pajero Sport car, made in 2008.
His family members — his wife and two sons — earned UAH 150 thousand a year. They own a land plot of 400 square meters, a 2008 Hyundai Accent, and contributions to the capital of companies in the amount of UAH 1 thousand.
His expenses for voluntary insurance amount to UAH 3 thousand, and those of his family members — UAH 2 thousand.
Subsequently, during his time in the civil service, Bereza filed 37 declarations (including amendments) over 7 years: 4 in 2016 — December 09, November 07, October 06 and March 29; 1 in 2015 — October 28; 7 in 2019 — May 25, May 29, January 27, February 25, June 03, October 20, July 12; 9 in 2017 — July 06, June 06, December 12, October 06, January 10, March 30, August 01, May 04, March 26; 8 in 2019 — May 25, May 29, December 27, February 25, June 03, November 20, February 25, July 12; 3 in 2018 — March 19, December 10, January 03; 5 in 2020 — February 03, February 26, September 21, April 05, September 09.
At the same time, Bereza did not file a declaration “before his dismissal”.
The last declaration submitted is a document dated September 21, 2020. According to this declaration, the salary is UAH 2.2 million. The document dated September 09, 2020 indicates a salary of UAH 116 thousand, and on February 3, the declaration shows UAH 109 thousand in salary. In the declaration of February 26, 2020, the salary was UAH 511 thousand, and on April 05 — UAH 110 thousand. In all declarations, except for February 03, the source of income is the NBU. It is very difficult to understand the principle of filing documents and the logic in the figures indicated in them… In addition, nothing is indicated in the declarations for 2020 except for salary.
At the same time, in 2019, Bereza owned a private house in the village of Hatne with an area of 312 square meters, located on a land plot of 1213 square meters, and an apartment in Kyiv with an area of 36 square meters. Bereza owns a 2008 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport car, and his wife, Andreyko Anna, owns a 2017 Toyota Corolla.
Anna has obligations under the insurance contract in the amount of UAH 4.5 thousand, and Bereza himself — UAH 9 thousand. In the reporting period, Bereza received UAH 2 million 637 in salary from the NBU, UAH 2 thousand in medical insurance, UAH 70 thousand in pension contributions from the NBU, UAH 35 thousand in investment income, UAH 130 thousand in interest, about UAH 2.5 thousand in insurance payments, UAH 60 thousand in interest, and UAH 1 million in other income. Hanna Andreyko received UAH 50 thousand of salary from Tysagaz LLC, UAH 647 thousand from 3Pi Energy Consulting LLC, UAH 3 thousand of interest, UAH 241 thousand from the alienation of property. The family’s monetary assets amounted to USD 22 thousand, UAH 267 thousand, UAH 284 thousand, UAH 1 million 450 thousand, and EUR 4 thousand. His son Sviatoslav has about 10 thousand euros in his bank accounts. Bereza keeps 5 thousand UAH, 6 thousand dollars and 1.7 thousand euros in cash.
These amounts, which are not even a few million hryvnias, clearly indicate the gray income of Bereza’s family and himself.
Now for more details… Bereza headed this Department of Financial Monitoring of the National Bank in June 2015. He was in charge of ensuring the proper level of financial monitoring by financial sector participants.
Kateryna Rozhkova, First Deputy Governor of the NBU, thanked Bereza for “the high standards set in building the financial monitoring system almost from scratch and for introducing new international approaches” and noted that she respected Bereza’s decision to move on.
Rozhkova also added: “We joined the NBU almost simultaneously, in the summer of 2015. And I can definitely evaluate the work done during this time in the field of financial monitoring. We started working at a time when millions and billions of dollars were being withdrawn from the country’s banking system. At a time when some banks existed solely as laundries for money laundering. We managed to close this “broken pipe” by removing 10 banks from the market through financial monitoring. Therefore, his criticism was expected for us.”
It is worth noting that after Kyrylo Shevchenko was appointed head of the central bank, allegedly due to violations of the Code of Ethics and a number of other reasons, several top managers of the NBU, including three board members, changed in July 2020.
Let’s start with Bereza’s affiliation and connections with business structures. For quite some time, the press has been reporting that Bereza has been under the influence of oligarch Kaufman for a long time. Thus, the director of the financial monitoring department of the National Bank of Ukraine, Bereza, may be involved in the disclosure of confidential information about competitors for the Odesa tobacco monopolist, oligarch Borys Kaufman.
According to the journalists, out of the total number, the data was transferred only to those clients who were in confrontation or had conflicts with Kaufman, but mostly to those who are engaged in the same business as the oligarch, i.e. his direct competitors. To understand the scale of Kaufman’s interests, we note that he owns stakes in tobacco, alcohol, hotel, construction, banking, shipping, aviation, and media businesses, some of which he owns with Oleksandr Hranovsky. In 2018, Bereza was also exposed in a large-scale money laundering scheme.
But, as is the case in our country, the case was not pursued and was successfully closed. According to some reports, a representative of the Russian oligarchy, Mikhail Fridman, to whom Bereza owes his appointment to the National Bank, was able to help close the case and avoid liability, and for which Bereza has been grateful to his lobbyist patron for many years.
For reference, Borys Kaufman is the owner of the largest distributor of tobacco products, Tedis, which in 2016 was recognized as a monopoly by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine and accused of artificially inflating prices for tobacco products. As a result of the fines, Tedis paid UAH 300 million to the budget. However, it later filed a lawsuit challenging the committee’s decision to return UAH 300 million to the tobacco king and cancel the fine totaling UAH 3.5 billion.
According to experts, Bereza has long been in the oligarch’s sphere of influence and even lobbied for his interests. At the same time, according to Bereza’s own declaration, he is crystal clear and leads an almost ascetic lifestyle. During the Zelenskyy administration, there have been no complaints against the director of the NBU’s financial monitoring department, and everyone is satisfied with his work as a part-time job.
The media associate Bereza with the “father” of a corruption scheme created to legalize unofficial income through the banking system. The irony is that it is the department he heads and fully controls that is obliged to detect, counteract and eradicate such phenomena.
It is worth reminding that Bereza took up this position in 2015, having previously served as a member of the Citibank board. It was the creation of this scheme and the experience gained in its use that made Bereza a valuable asset and lobbying target for not only Ukrainian but also Russian oligarchs. And that is why for 5 years Bereza has been safely and unhindered serving the interests of shadow business.
In September 2020, Ihor Bereza, Director of the Financial Monitoring Department, was dismissed from his position. The grounds for this decision are not specified, as well as the wording of the decision is unknown. However, Mr. Bereza did not leave empty-handed. Thus, as a salary at his main place of work at the National Bank, the official’s income amounted to UAH 2.2 million.
Initially, Bereza’s monthly income was much less and amounted to UAH 116 thousand. Later, the Constitutional Court ruled that it was illegal to limit the salaries of civil servants, and as a result, the NBU immediately made a decision to raise its employees’ salaries by UAH 47 thousand, and in 2019, the National Bank paid Bereza a basic salary of UAH 2.6 million (UAH 219 thousand per month). In the last years of Bereza’s tenure, Ukrainian banks have systematically won lawsuits against the NBU, recognizing fines for financial monitoring procedures as illegal and canceling them.
In view of the above, the motivation for financially rewarding Bereza by his main employer remains unclear…, as this situation could have arisen solely due to the actions of the Head of the Department and his employees.
Another impartial fact for Bereza was the publicity of his negotiations with Kateryna Rozhnova, the First Deputy Governor of the National Bank. The conversation concerned the issue of removing one of the Russian banks from the NSDC sanctions.
In the context of the conflict, such actions can be regarded as treason, as there are facts of disclosure of confidential information, collusion and abuse of office, which at least deserve dismissal, and in general, criminal proceedings. But instead, Bereza was honorably awarded a substantial raise to his already considerable salary.
One of the explanations for this situation, in addition to the inaction of law enforcement agencies in bringing the defendants to justice, was internal changes in the National Bank’s policy.
Thus, according to some information, Smoliy, Shevchenko’s predecessor as head of the National Bank, before his resignation, amended the employment contracts of top managers by adding a section to them that concerned additional payments to employees of this level upon their dismissal. It was about the amount of 6 monthly salaries, but in Bereza’s case, it exceeded the amount of 10 of his salaries compared to 2019, and 18 salaries compared to August 2020.
Another story concerned Bereza at a time when Ekaterina Rozhkova was rescuing Bank-Moscow, a subsidiary of VTB Bank. To summarize the conversation, it went like this:
Rozhkov: “Igor, hi! I have one question at this time… Please tell me, did we apply to remove BM Bank from the list or not?”
Bereza: “Yes, we did, we did… Oh… well, look, I can’t promise anything… It turns out that the National Security and Defense Council has to meet, and they have to make a decision, and then the president has to implement it by decree. Now there is a… it turns out that the first… lists are supposedly made, and there are a lot of mistakes, and now the procedure for making changes by a state body is underway. And we got into this stream…”
Rozhkova: “And when?”
Bereza: “Kateryna, I don’t know… I’m afraid… you know… The previous sanctions were approved for six months. Now, as I understand it, it will be much faster, but I can’t tell you for sure whether it will be in two weeks or a month… I can’t.”
The reason for the conversation was the actual ban on the sale and purchase of BM-Bank shares in September 2015, which was sanctioned by the National Security and Defense Council, on the temporary restriction of a person’s right to use and dispose of property owned by him or her, the termination of economic and financial obligations, the ban on providing loans, credits, financial assistance, guarantees, the ban on lending through the purchase of securities, and the purchase of securities.
But the delicacy of the situation was that the National Bank had not yet made a final decision on this financial institution. And in this situation, with unknown motivation, Rozhkova began to resolve this issue with Bereza’s hands, acting exclusively in the interests of the chairman of the board of the said bank, Konstantin Vaisman.
Bereza’s wife was also involved in schemes related to the legalization of funds of illegal origin.
To reiterate, financial monitoring is used to combat the legalization of illegally obtained funds through the banking system, i.e., to counteract money laundering.
This service in the main bank of the country is headed by Bereza, who has a wife, Andriyko Anna, who is also an employee of NG-Trading LLC, where she received UAH 300 thousand in salary in 2017, i.e. approximately UAH 20 thousand per month “net”. This organization has a profile in the field of natural gas trading.
The head of the company was a certain Yakubenko Oleksiy, born in 1983, registered at ul. Oboronnaya 3, apartment 4, in Donetsk (uncontrolled territory). As it should be in Ukraine, the real owner of NG-Trading LLC is oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. This company is managed and controlled through FURGENCOTRADING.LTD, and transactions are conducted through accounts opened with FUIB. The story is ordinary, as well as the fact that in 2018, NG-Trading LLC was repeatedly exposed for tax evasion attempts: in February 2018 in Kramatorsk (http://reyestr.court.gov.ua/Review/ 72576936), in May of the same year in the Pechersk district of Kyiv (http://reyestr.court.gov.ua/Review/73950144) and in August in Solomyansky district of Kyiv (http://reyestr.court.gov.ua/Review/75741770).
Thus, according to a court decision, the prosecutor’s office explicitly states that NG-Trading LLC has signs of fictitiousness and is engaged in money laundering. Given this fact, as well as the fact that Hanna Bereza holds one of the senior positions in this organization and is in charge of the tender services. As a result of its activities in the gas trading market, over the past few years, NG-Trading LLC has signed contracts with state-owned enterprises and organizations totaling about UAH 25 million.
And this is without taking into account the cost of similar transactions with private companies. At the same time, Bereza’s wife performed her labor duties for a salary of only $715 per month, while overseeing a very strategic area. This leads to the conclusion that Hanna Bereza has unofficial additional payments, in addition to the incomparably low salary for a representative of the top management of a company with millions of dollars in turnover, and how Bereza himself reacts to the failure of this organization to comply with financial discipline…? This situation directly indicates the existence of a conflict of interest in Bereza’s activities and the existence of grounds for initiating a criminal case, not to mention the dismissal of the head of financial monitoring.
Coming back to Bereza’s dismissal, despite all sorts of dark spots in her work record, it happened only when the entire vertical of control over the banking system of the National Bank was changed and started directly with Rozhkova. Without much analysis, everyone knows that Rozhkova was one of the members of the team of Gontareva-Smoliy’s predecessors and completely usurped control over the banking system, with the bank runs of 2014-2016 and the nationalization of Privat-Bank among her achievements. The fact that the above-mentioned officials were dismissed one after the other indicates their direct and strong relationship, which, in turn, is the clearest explanation of Ihor Bereza’s motives, values and principles throughout his career…