Sense Bank to be sold: President urges government to speed up the process
6 May 18:36
Sense Bank is to be privatized this year without any delays. The government also needs to liberalize the banking sector. This was stated by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to
State-owned banks need liberalization and expanded business opportunities. According to the president, the issue of Sense Bank has already been resolved, and the process of its sale cannot be postponed.
“As for Sense Bank, the need to privatize this bank has already been determined, and there should be no delays in the privatization process: the bank must be privatized this year,” the head of state emphasized.
The head of state called on the Cabinet of Ministers to accelerate the resolution of issues that are hindering the country’s economic development and reducing budget revenues.
The government must ensure the necessary results.
“I am counting on active and swift steps to resolve the issues that are hindering economic processes in Ukraine and reducing state budget revenues,” Zelenskyy added.
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The Sense Bank Case
As a reminder, earlier, Verkhovna Rada Committee Chairman Danylo Getmantsev criticized the National Bank over the situation with Sense Bank. According to him, the regulator systematically overlooked corruption schemes that had been serving the illegal gambling business for years.
Against the backdrop of these events, Ukraine is actively preparing for changes in gambling regulation. In particular, the Ministry of Digital Transformation has already revealed details of the gambling industry reform, which provides for the introduction of digital control and a single tax rate.
Sense Bank on “Mindich’s” tapes
The composition of the supervisory board of the state-owned Sense Bank, appointed by the Cabinet of Ministers on June 18, 2025, was discussed more than a month earlier by figures involved in the “Midas” case, according to “Ukrainska Pravda.”
According to the publication, the new “Mindich tapes” capture a conversation between Oleksandr Tsukerman (whom the NABU investigation identifies as a co-organizer of corruption schemes in the energy sector led by Timur Mindich and an employee of the “back office” for money laundering—ed.) and Vasyl Veselyi (a businessman, sholova, and owner of “Kyivpidzemshlyakhbud” LLC—ed.), who became an advisor to the bank’s management after the nationalization of Sense Bank.
In a conversation on May 9, 2025, Vesely, as reported by UP, allegedly announced his preferred list of members for the bank’s supervisory board: Petr Novak, Jerzy Shugaev, Eva de Falk, Oleksandr Shchur, Mykola Hladyshenko, and Oleg Mistyuk. Forty days later, the Cabinet of Ministers appointed precisely these individuals to the supervisory board of Sense Bank.
In the published excerpt from the transcript of the so-called “Mindich tapes,” Vesely also discusses with Zuckerman the distribution of influence on the financial institution’s supervisory board, noting that “there should be 5 or 6 of our members” out of nine, reports UP.
Law enforcement agencies and the court are to provide a legal assessment of these conversations.
About the bank
Sense Bank (JSC “Sense Bank”)—formerly Alfa-Bank Ukraine—is one of Ukraine’s largest banks, founded in the 1990s and previously known as Alfa-Bank Ukraine, which, prior to the full-scale war, was part of an international group of Russian origin.
In 2022, the financial institution underwent a rebranding, changing its name to “Sense Bank,” and in July 2023, it was nationalized: the state, represented by the Ministry of Finance, acquired 100% of the bank’s shares. This decision was made in light of risks to financial stability and the previous owners’ ties to Russian business.
As previously reported by "Komersant Ukrainian", against the backdrop of the “Mindich tapes,” the state-owned Sense Bank ( JSC “Sense Bank”) announced a tender for a comprehensive study of its own reputation. The procurement cost is 1.3 million UAH
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