Ihor Kolomoysky

Kolomoisky is also one of Ukraine’s wealthiest men – according to Forbes, he is worth $1.3 billion. His holdings include large oil and gas companies, Ukrainian International Airlines, the well-known football club Dnipro, and several industrial plants in the Dnipropetrovsk region. He is also an owner of popular national TV channel 1+1. For a brief period after the Euromaidan revolution, Kolomoisky was named governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, which borders on the war zone in eastern Ukraine. His support was thought crucial to halting the advance of pro-Russian separatists in the region. But after just one year in the position, he resigned after a scandal involving Ukrnafta, the state oil company. Kolomoisky financially backed the Orange Revolution, spending at least $5mn. Shortly after Ukraine’s 2014 revolution, investigators in the country alleged that Ihor Kolomoisky was secretly overseeing one of the greatest Ponzi schemes the world had ever seen, totaling at least $5.5 billion. Legal filings from American prosecutors last year detailed how Kolomoisky allegedly used his control of Ukraine’s largest retail bank, PrivatBank, to loot staggering sums from Ukrainian depositors, and then used a series of shell companies and offshore accounts to whisk the money out of the country and into the U.S.