Sense Bank bears primary responsibility for allowing 150 million hryvnias in illicit funds to pass through its financial monitoring controls, according to Ukrainian legal experts.
Lawyers said commercial banks serve as the first line of defense against suspicious transactions, meaning liability for bypassed oversight rests with the lender rather than the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine.
Preliminary findings from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine indicate Sense Bank was used to launder 150 million hryvnias intended as bail for a suspect in a major corruption investigation code named Midas. Investigators said members of a criminal group established control over Sense Bank and manipulated its operations to process bail money originating from unlawful sources. The case is linked to former Ukrainian energy and justice minister Herman Halushchenko.
Primary control responsibilities
Dyna Dryzhakova, an attorney and head of the Prima Leader Group law firm, said primary and direct responsibility for financial monitoring in this case lies with Sense Bank rather than state monitors.
She noted that under Law No. 361-IX, commercial banks are legally required to verify clients, analyze the origin of funds, detect suspicious or threshold transactions, and halt abnormal payment flows. State monitoring functions as financial intelligence, gathering reports from banks and assessing them alongside data from other official sources.
Dryzhakova said that if investigative claims that internal control systems were intentionally turned off inside Sense Bank are confirmed, state intelligence would not have received notification of the payments. She added that blaming the state body for missing transactions disguised within the bank through official abuse confused primary control duties with state analytical functions.
Systemic failures and automated checks
Serhiy Lytvynenko, managing partner of the Winner Partners law firm, said the failure to detect a large scale scheme should not be attributed to an error by an individual analyst.
He explained that missing major money laundering schemes typically signals deliberate systemic disregard of procedures or direct intervention by institution management in setting risk profiles to cover specific clients.
Internal financial monitoring within commercial banks relies on automated anti-money laundering software rather than manual reviews by a single employee. Automated systems initially screen transactions against hundreds of risk indicators, flagging atypical operations with a high risk status for secondary examination by compliance officers. When necessary, banks must request supporting documentation, including contracts, declarations, or tax records, to confirm the origin of customer funds.
Regulatory framework and enforcement
Every commercial bank operates with a designated financial monitoring officer who is required to act autonomously and may notify regulators of any managerial pressure. The investigation, also known in official regulatory reports as the Forest Gump case, coincides with enforcement actions by the National Bank of Ukraine, which previously ordered the removal of the head of Sense Bank's supervisory board.
National Bank of Ukraine Governor Andriy Pyshnyy stated that the Forest Gump investigation confirmed the effectiveness of existing financial monitoring regulations when properly enforced by authorities.
Sense Bank is a major Ukrainian commercial bank operating under national banking and anti-money laundering laws. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine operates as an independent law enforcement agency investigating high-level corrupt practices, while the State Financial Monitoring Service serves as Ukraine's primary financial intelligence unit.
