State-owned Sense Bank in Ukraine has suspended financial monitoring director Lyudmyla Snihur following a regulator order linked to an anti-corruption probe.
The bank confirmed in an official statement that Snihur has been removed from her duties and completely blocked from accessing corporate networks and internal banking systems.
The suspension follows a formal directive sent by the National Bank of Ukraine on August 21. Central bank officials stated that statutory powers allow regulators to mandate immediate personnel actions to fix critical weaknesses in corporate governance, risk management, and internal controls.
The regulatory intervention came after the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine released wiretap recordings from an investigation designated as the Forest Gump case.
Bail laundering scheme
Investigative documents indicate that Sense Bank was utilized to launder 150 million hryvnia intended for the court bail of former Ukrainian Energy and Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko. Prosecutors allege that executive leadership, including the chairman of the management board and the chairman of the supervisory board, directly intervened to bypass standard anti-money laundering protocols.
Under Ukrainian central bank rules, large financial transfers must undergo mandatory manual review by compliance personnel to prevent illicit capital movements. To bypass these automated filters, the bank board chairman allegedly instructed staff to establish temporary manual windows by placing the payment monitoring system into maintenance mode.
Co-conspirators were notified of the precise timing of the service windows, enabling them to execute transfers without triggering reviews by monitoring staff. Armed guards initially delivered physical cash in bags to a conversion center, where funds were converted into electronic deposits across accounts owned by controlled shell companies before Sense Bank released the money for bail.
Supervisory board restructuring
The investigation has prompted executive governance changes at the institution. Supervisory board chairman Mykola Hladyshenko was removed from his position shortly after investigators made the wiretap recordings public.
On August 24, Sense Bank appointed Slovak banker Peter Novak to succeed Hladyshenko on the supervisory board. Novak previously held executive roles at European financial institutions including Tatra Banka, Raiffeisen Bank International, VUB Banka, and Prima Banka.
