The director of the legal department of the National Bank of Ukraine, Oleksandr Zima, against whom the police are investigating a criminal case for abuse of power or official position, which led to serious consequences, received almost UAH 6.2 million in salary last year, writes UNN.
According to the declaration of Zima for 2024, he received 6,198,238 hryvnias of salary in the National Bank last year.
In addition, last year the chief lawyer of the NBU received UAH 36,585 in interest, UAH 164,046 in pension contributions from the NBU, UAH 35,274 from the corporate non-state pension fund of the National Bank. Another UAH 2,142,057 consisted of income in the amount of the nominal value of redeemed domestic government bonds.
Thus, last year, the total income of the chief lawyer of the NBU, Oleksandr Zima, amounted to more than 8.5 million hryvnias.
Interestingly, as in previous years, Oleksandr Zima does not indicate any income of his wife, Kateryna Zima.
According to the declaration, last year the chief lawyer of the NBU kept $170,000 in cash. Zima has GBP 35,870 and over UAH 1.6 million in bank accounts. In addition, he keeps another UAH 724,161 in gold bars.
It is worth noting that last year he paid for his daughter Anastasia's education in Great Britain for a total amount of almost UAH 1.4 million.
Perhaps such wealth of the director of the legal department of the National Bank would not cause surprise and outrage if it were not for one "but". Since the end of 2023, a criminal proceeding has been investigated against Oleksandr Zima, opened under Part 2 of Art. 364 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (abuse of power or official position, which led to serious consequences).
The case was opened because of his letter to the Deposit Guarantee Fund for Individuals (DGF). In the document, Zima, who is simultaneously the director of the legal department of the NBU and the chairman of the Administrative Board of the DGF, on behalf of the National Bank, recommended that the Fund withdraw the lawsuits filed by Concord Bank against the NBU. These lawsuits concerned the cancellation of fines in the amount of almost UAH 63.5 million and were filed even before the decision to liquidate the bank.
The Deposit Guarantee Fund heeded this recommendation and withdrew the lawsuits, which, according to Olena Sosiedka, co-founder of Concord Bank, deprived the bank's shareholders of their constitutional right to a fair trial.
In the autumn of last year, Zima's case was transferred from the SBI to the investigation of the Pechersk Police Department of Kyiv. Law enforcement officers informed UNN that they plan to interrogate the chief lawyer of the NBU, and after handing him a notice of suspicion, the investigators will probably apply to the court to remove Zima from the position of director of the legal department of the NBU. The investigators also recognized the co-founders of Concord, Olena and Yulia Sosiedka, as victims in this criminal proceeding, which confirmed that Zima's actions caused harm.
According to Zima's declaration, he has not yet been removed from office and continues to work at the National Bank despite the criminal case over the alleged official crime.