Ihor Valeriyovych Kolomoyskyi (; ; born 13 February 1963) is a Ukrainian-born Israeli billionaire businessman, once considered the leading oligarch in Ukraine.
Already an entrepreneur in the last years of Soviet Ukraine, in 2010 Kolomoyskyi was rated as the second richest person in Ukraine, and as one of the country's most influential oligarchs. In 1992, he co-founded PrivatBank and its informal stable of companies, Privat Group. He subsequently acquired extensive media holdings. From 2014 till 2015, Kolomoyskyi served as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast until his dismissal by President Petro Poroshenko. In 2016, his undercapitalised bank was declared a threat to Ukraine's financial security and taken into state ownership. In 2019, Kolomoyskyi's media power and funding supported Volodymyr Zelenskyy's successful presidential campaign to unseat Poroshenko.
In 2020, he was indicted in the United States on charges related to large-scale bank fraud. In 2021, the U.S. banned Kolomoyskyi and his family from entering the country, accusing him of corruption and being a threat to the Ukrainian public's faith in democratic institutions. Zelenskyy reportedly stripped Kolomoyskyi of his Ukrainian citizenship in 2022. Later that same year, those of Kolomoyskyi's assets deemed to be of strategic value to the state in light of the Russian invasion were nationalised. These included Ukraine's largest gasoline companies. In 2023, Kolomoyskyi was arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on charges of money laundering and fraud, and placed under pre-trial arrest.
Name Kolomoyskyi uses the nickname Benya (),Anti-Privat Group rally under way near Naftogaz of Ukraine HQ in Kyiv, Interfax-Ukraine (6 August 2015) an invocation of the infamous Ukrainian (and Jewish) criminal reprobate Benya Krik, popularly fictionalized in Isaac Babel's Odessa Stories. Occasionally, Kolomoyskyi is called Bonifatsiy (the eponymous star of the popular Soviet cartoon "Каникулы Бонифация" (Bonifacy's holidays by Soyuzmultfilm).
Early life and education Kolomoyskyi was born into a Jewish family in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Both parents had graduated in engineering. His mother worked at the university and father in a metallurgical plant. Already in his childhood he was considered to be very determined, diligent and serious, was enthusiastic about sports, and liked to play chess. Professionally, he followed the example of his parents. After graduating from the Gymnasium 21 in Dnipro with the Komsomol badge "For outstanding school performance", in 1980 he took up graduate studies in engineering at the Leonid Brezhnev Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute (now the National Metallurgical Academy of Ukraine), graduating in 1985.
As a Komsomol activist, Kolomoyskyi was involved in the so-called "disco movement"—an attempt by the authorities to promote an ideological safe alternative to the growing, underground, rebroadcast and performance of "Anglo-American" rock music including, in the 80s, heavy metal and punk. Kolomoyskyi used his role in organising approved dance venues and concerts to begin his trading career, as did others in his position, several of whom would go on to play prominent roles in post-Soviet national politics, among them Yulia Tymoshenko, Victor Pinchuk, Serhiy Tihipko, and Oleksandr Turchynov.The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Social Class, ed. Ian Peddie, New York / London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, , page 318 + 319
Business career In 1986, Kolomoyskyi found work in the Fianit trading cooperative.
In 1990, with two other graduates from Dnipropetrovsk universities, Gennadiy Bogolyubov and Oleksiy Martynov, Kolomoyskyi created a joint enterprise marketing office equipment bought in Moscow. After the collapse of the USSR, the partners, joined by the son of a major Soviet entrepreneur, Leonid Miloslavsky, began to import foreign goods – from sneakers and sportswear to telephones. To pay for the imports, Kolomoyskyi arranged the export of steel products. Soon they realized the greater profits to be made in internationally trading the locally sourced ores and metal. Among other operations, their Privat group supplied fuel to the mining company Pokrov (Ordzhonikidze) mineral processing combine, receiving in return manganese ore for export.
In 1991, together with Leonid Miloslavsky, Oleksiy Martynov, and Hennadiy Boholyubov, he founded Sentosa Ltd, which transported and resold goods and equipment from Moscow to Dnipropetrovsk. Later, petroleum products were imported, they expanded into ferroalloy, supplied Ordzhonikidze GOK (later Pokrov Mining and Processing Plant GOK) with fuel, and received manganese ore for further export under barter agreements.
In March 1992, the four companies of the Privat Group established Privatbank CJSC. Unlike state-owned banks, Privat willingly served private entrepreneurs and in 1995 participated aggressively in the voucher scheme for the privatization of state assets. With the blessing of Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma (also from Dnipro, and whose successful presidential campaign in 1994 Kolomoyskyi and his partners later funded), PrivatBank was also the only Ukrainian lender to receive permission from the National Bank of Ukraine to open overseas branches. One branch in Latvia, established in 1992, was later implicated in the 2014 Moldovan bank fraud scandal. The operations of a second, opened in the late 1990s in Cyprus, helped precipitate the nationalization of PrivatBank in 2016.
Between 1999 and 2003, Kolomoyskyi gained control of Ukrnafta, Kalinin Coke and Chemical Plant, Ozerka market in Dnipropetrovsk, Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant, and other companies. Through Privat Group, whose board he chaired from 1997,Three's a crowd for Dynamo and Shakhtar, The Guardian (28 August 2007) Kolomoyskyi controlled, at various points in the early 2000s, three Ukrainian airlines: Aerosvit Airlines, Dniproavia, Donbassaero. All went bankrupt. Through the asset management company Mansvell Enterprises Limited, he controlled a further three Scandinavian airlines, Skyways Express, City Airline, and Cimber Sterling each of which again, within a few years, filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations.
As of 2008, other fields of activity in Ukraine as well as in Russia and Romania included: ferroalloys, finance, oil products, and mass media.Ihor Kolomoysky, Kyiv Post (18 June 2008),
Kolomoyskyi's media assets were initially controlled by Glavred media holding, which owns Information Agency UNIAN, the weekly magazine Profile, and newspapers Novaya Gazeta and Gazeta po-Kievsky. In early September 2007, Ronald Lauder announced that Kolomoyskyi had acquired a 3% stake, and was on the board of directors of, Central European Media Enterprises. In April 2010, through his wholly owned Harley Trading Limited company, for around $300 million Kolomoyskyi secured control of one of Ukraine's largest media conglomerates, 1+1 Media Group, which operates eight Ukrainian TV channels.
In November 2019, The New York Times reported that Kolomoyskyi was behind plans to build a controversial ski resort in Svydovets, Ukraine, and quoted a professor at a local university describing Kolomoyskyi as "a leech who sucks our blood here and puts it in Switzerland."
Wealth As of 2007, Kolomoyskyi was a billionaire listed by Forbes as the 799th-richest man in the world with 3.8 billion dollars.50 richest Ukrainians , ForUm (29 May 2007) In 2010 Kyiv Post estimated his wealth at $6.243 billion.#2 Richest: Ihor Kolomoisky, 47, Kyiv Post (17 December 2010) In March 2012 Forbes placed him 377th with $3 billion.Eight Ukrainians make Forbes magazine's list of world billionaires, Kyiv Post (8 March 2012) In 2010 Kyiv Post listed Kolomoyskyi as the second richest person in Ukraine; in 2012 Forbes rated him the third richest person in Ukraine (after Rinat Akhmetov and/or Viktor Pinchuk).Rich Man In A Poor Country, Kyiv Post (17 December 2010)
In March 2015, after the sharp decline in the value of the Ukrainian hryvnia, The Economist listed his net worth as $1.36 billion. In 2019, the Ukrainian magazine Focus placed Kolomoyskyi third on a list of the 100 most influential Ukrainians.
Activities in the Jewish community
Kolomoyskyi has been a prominent figure in Ukraine's organised Jewish community.Akhmetov joins Ukraine oligarchs in pledging to protect homeland – Financial Times, 2 March 2014 In 2008, he was elected the President of "the United Jewish community of Ukraine" in Kyiv. He became a major funder in Ukraine of the Chabad movement, which has Ukrainian roots.
In 2012, with Gennady Bogolubov and Victor Pinchuk, he financed construction of what purports to be the largest multifunctional Jewish Community Center in Europe, the Menorah Centre, in downtown Dnipro. Comprising seven marble towers (of which the highest is 20 stories) arranged in the shape of a menorah, it houses a synagogue, two hotels, kosher restaurant and grocery store and Jewish Memory and Holocaust Museum.
In 2010 in Berlin, after promising the outgoing president he would donate $14 million,European Jewish Parliament off to a semi-comedic start – JWeekly, 3 November 2011 Kolomoyskyi was appointed as the president of the European Council of Jewish Communities (ECJC).#2 Richest: Ihor Kolomoisky – Kyiv Post, 17 December 2010 Some western European ECJC board members described his elevation as a "putsch"A necessary putsch? – Jerusalem Post, 29 October 2010 and a "Soviet-style takeover".Like NBA's Nets, European Jewish group gets an oligarch, but some see Soviet-style takeover – JTA, 2 November 2010 After several resigned in protest, Kolomoyskyi quit the ECJC and, together with fellow Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Rabinovich, founded the European Jewish Union in April 2011.
Launched by Kolomoyskyi and Rabinovich at Disneyland Paris, the EJU subsequently styled itself the European Jewish Parliament. Modelled on the Israeli Knesset with 120 members, its declared aim is to represent the concerns of the Jewish community to the European Union. The Brussels-based initiative, with which Kolomoyskyi no longer appears to be associated, has been opposed by much of the established Jewish community leadership.
Allegations and charges of corruption
Nationalisation of PrivatBank
Beginning in 2010, rumors circulated that Kolomoyskyi's assets were coming under pressure from the Ukrainian authorities and that he was spending increasingly more time in Switzerland.
In September 2013, Kolomoyskyi was criticized by Mr Justice Mann in a court case in London involving an attempted hostile takeover in October 2010 of Alexander Zhukov's JKX Oil and Gas Company, The judge noted that Kolomoyskyi had "a reputation of having sought to take control of a company at gunpoint in Ukraine" and that a finance director considered she had "strong grounds for doubting the honesty of Mr Kolomoyskyi".
In 2015, Victor Pinchuk brought a $2 billion civil action against Kolomoyskyi and Gennadiy Bogolyubov in the High Court of Justice in London over the 2004 purchase of a Ukrainian mining company. Allegations made include murder and bribery. In January 2016 an undisclosed out-of-court settlement was reached just before the trial was due to start.
From 1 April 2016, "1+1" media group ceased all TV broadcasts. According to Ruslan Bortnik, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Analysis and Policy Management, unable to find external sponsors and faced with the determination of the Ukrainian government to secure own television presence, the TV project was proving unprofitable for Kolomoyskyi. Other projects, like Kolomoyskyi Football Club Dnipro where the players were not receiving their pay, were also in difficulty. Through Privat Group, Kolomoyskyi also had an interest in Budivelnyk Kyiv. In 2019, after being relegated FC Dnipro was dissolved.