From Kolomoiskyi’s credit schemes to the creation of Monobank: what is known about Oleg Gorokhovsky’s past

From Kolomoiskyi’s credit schemes to the creation of Monobank: what is known about Oleg Gorokhovsky’s past

Oleg Gorokhovsky, before the launch of monobank, had a 20-year career at “PrivatBank” alongside Ihor Kolomoiskyi. It is this period that raises the most questions.

From 2005 to 2016, Gorokhovsky rose from a top manager to first deputy chairman of the board. He served on the credit committee — the body that approved multi-million-dollar lending decisions. His signature appears on those decisions.

In the High Court of London’s ruling of 30 July 2025 concerning “PrivatBank,” Gorokhovsky’s name is mentioned 12 times — not as a principal figure, but as one of the executives involved in approving the credit agreements.

The court describes a scheme under which large loans were issued to companies without adequate collateral, proper due diligence, or any clear business activity.

One example is Trade Point Agro. The company existed for only a few months yet received a loan of tens of millions of dollars without financial statements, collateral, or a full risk assessment. Another episode involves the Cypriot firm Rossyn Investing Corp. The company conducted almost no operations and held no assets of its own, yet its debts continued to accumulate.

The court specifically notes that credit-committee members knew, or should have known, to whom these loans were being granted and what the chances of repayment were.

Another important detail: together with Dmytro Yatsenko, Gorokhovsky chaired the ethics and compliance committee. This body was supposed to be the first to respond to instances of insider lending and internal violations. However, as stated in the court materials, this did not happen.

According to the court’s findings, these decisions formed part of the mechanism through which at least $1.9 billion was siphoned out of the bank out of total losses of $5.5 billion.

Most notably, in November 2016 Gorokhovsky was still signing the disputed credit decisions. By the summer of 2017, monobank had already launched.

This raises a question long discussed in the market. Some fintech participants claim that certain software solutions and internal technologies originally developed for “PrivatBank” may have been used by the new team. Publicly, these claims remain a subject of debate.

Gorokhovsky himself was not a defendant in the UK case, and the court did not bring direct charges against him. At the same time, the ruling states that the decisions signed by the credit committee demonstrated a disregard for basic principles of banking control and risk management. In English jurisdiction, this is almost equivalent to an accusation, albeit without criminal prosecution.

After nationalization, contacts with the oligarch did not cease. In 2018–2019, the two were repeatedly seen together in Geneva, Tel Aviv, and Dnipro. Gorokhovsky turned to Kolomoiskyi for “instructions” regarding an unidentified payment.

In 2019, during the change of power in Ukraine, Gorokhovsky, in sync with Ihor Kolomoiskyi and Hennadiy Boholyubov, filed a lawsuit seeking to cancel the nationalization of “PrivatBank.” In total, 40 such lawsuits were filed. At the time, Gorokhovskyi was also a shareholder of the bank, holding 0.38 % of its shares.

He sought to have the agreement under which the state acquired “PrivatBank’s” shares declared invalid. Even after the proceedings were closed, he attempted to appeal the decision. The lawsuit was withdrawn only later. Gorokhovsky himself explained this by his unwillingness to litigate against the state during wartime.