Poroshenko drops out of top-10 richest businessmen in Ukraine

Poroshenko drops out of top-10 richest businessmen in Ukraine
Ukrainian president is no longer in the top 10 richest people in the country / Ukraine presidential office
By bne IntelliNews April 24, 2018

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko drop out of the list of the top-10 richest people in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian magazine Focus.

Poroshenko is one of the wealthiest men in the country and in the first years of his presidency that began in 2014 was the only Ukrainian oligarch to see his wealth increase. Since then it has started to declined and he fell from 10th place to 11th position last year with a total estimated wealth of $542mn in 2017 from $589mn a year before.

The magazine attribute the decline mainly to the fact that Poroshenko's business conglomerate has lost two key assets. Specifically, the Ukrainian confectionary company Roshen was forced to close recently down its factory in Russia's Lipetsk region.

Poroshenko also lost a shipyard in Sevastopol following its nationalisation by Russian occupation government of the Crimean peninsular in 2014. The company has been taken over by Russia’s state-owned shipbuilding company Zvezdochka and is supposed to be modernized. The Ukrainian president has never commented on the fate of the shipyard.

According to Focus Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov remains the richest Ukrainian in 2017, with fortune of $3.1bn.

Two other oligarchs - Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Bogolyubov - retained their second and third positions in the survey with $1.6bn and $1.5bn respectively. The both businessmen are locked in a bitter court fighting with the Ukrainian authorities over the nation's largest lender Privatbank, nationalised in late 2016.

The government nationalised Privatbank in December 2016 after it failed to fulfil a three-year recapitalisation plan. The bank was found to have a UAH148bn ($5.6bn) hole in its balance sheet because of related-party financing.

Recently, the High Court of Justice in England ruled to establish a weekly limit of GBP20,000 on personal expenses of Kolomoisky. In December, the court ruled to freeze worldwide assets of the former owners, including six companies controlled by Kolomoisky and his partner Hennadiy Bogolyubov, worth more than $2.5bn.

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