Ihor Kolomoiskyy denies transferring $40 million to Zelenskyy, calling the payments commercial activity, but claims the real figure was $640 million, as journalists revisit offshore transfer allegations.
In a conversation with Slidstvo.Info, Ihor Kolomoiskyy said that he had “never transferred any $40 million [US dollars] to Zelenskyy.” At the same time, he noted that the money in question was in fact related to commercial activity, “in which someone was buying shares or a product from someone else.” However, he added that “$40 million is actually $640 million, because Kvartal 95 was a large company.”
The question concerned an investigative film by Slidstvo.Info, in which, in 2021, the agency’s journalists were able to partially confirm a scheme involving the transfer of $40 million from structures linked to oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyy to offshore companies belonging to Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his associates.
This was reported by Slidstvo.Info.
On December 10, inside the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv, journalists once again asked oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyy about the $40 million that, according to the agency’s investigation, he may have transferred to offshore companies linked to Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his associates.
Kolomoiskyy denied this information, just as he did four years ago. “I have never transferred any $40 million to Zelenskyy… I am not just refuting this information — I am saying that it never happened. And those $40 million are commercial activity, in which someone was buying shares or products from someone else,” the oligarch added.
Journalist: But offshore companies were involved there, weren’t they?
Ihor Kolomoiskyy: Well, yes, offshore companies were involved.
Journalist: And did you cooperate with offshore companies linked to Zelenskyy’s inner circle?
Ihor Kolomoiskyy: I didn’t — I was not part of those offshore companies. But there were certain companies that received payment for their product. And those companies, as everyone knows, were connected to Zelenskyy’s partners at the time. These were companies such as Green Family (a Cypriot company that until 2021 was owned by Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former business partners — Andrii Yakovlev, Borys and Serhii Shefir, as well as a company linked to Timur Mindich — ed.).
Journalist: And what product was that? We are talking about Kvartal 95.
Ihor Kolomoiskyy: TV [television] was buying some kind of product. “Pluses” [1+1] were buying it, Kvartal was buying it — what else was there? “Liga Smikhu.” That is, ordinary commercial activity.
However, Kolomoiskyy later advised journalists to “go and look at the BEB case” being heard at the Podilskyi District Court of Kyiv, which concerns schemes involving the oligarch’s unlawful legalization of more than 4 billion hryvnias. He noted that he had in fact transferred much more money to those companies — “not 40 million, but 640.”
“Go to that BEB case, and those 40 million will seem like nothing to you. There were 640 — those were big sums. Kvartal 95 was a large company — there were large turnovers and big money, they worked with the Russian market,” Kolomoiskyy said.
As a reminder, earlier more than 600 journalists from around the world analyzed 11.9 million offshore documents that became public after a new, largest-ever data leak. The project was named the Pandora Papers, and Slidstvo.Info also took part in it.
In 2021, the agency managed to find confirmation of information that had been published during the presidential campaign in the spring of 2019 — namely, a scheme under which offshore companies linked to Zelenskyy and his team allegedly received $40 million from companies associated with oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyy starting in 2012. This took place during the period when Kvartal 95 Studio began cooperating with the 1+1 television channel.
The credibility of the information presented in the Pandora Papers documents and in the scheme was confirmed by sources at Slidstvo.Info.
Journalists showed the scheme that had been made public during the elections to British financial crime expert Graham Barrow. The expert described the operations reflected in the scheme as suspicious.
“Whenever I see a series of transactions that look like this, it is a red flag for me. It looks like an unjustifiably complex series of transactions and therefore is likely to have a reason other than a purely commercial one,” he said.
Ihor Kolomoiskyy is a Ukrainian oligarch who was a co-founder of PrivatBank, one of Ukraine’s largest banks, and controlled the 1+1 Media Group, which gave him significant influence over public opinion and politics. Kolomoiskyy also served as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Region in 2014–2015.
Ihor Kolomoiskyy has been in custody since September 2, 2023. He was arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering. According to investigators, this episode concerns the misappropriation of funds between 2013 and 2020 through their transfer abroad, using the infrastructure of banks under his control.
Later, the Security Service of Ukraine reported the exposure of “new facts of criminal activity” by the owner of a major financial and industrial group, Ihor Kolomoiskyy. He was served with additional charges under three articles, involving illegal actions with documents, misappropriation of property, and the laundering of criminally obtained funds.
In May 2024, law enforcement informed Kolomoiskyy of suspicion in organizing a contract killing of the director of a legal company in 2003. Based on the new investigative materials, the businessman faces the possibility of life imprisonment.
According to the investigation, Ihor Kolomoiskyy allegedly ordered the murder of the director of a legal company for the “failure to comply with demands to annul and invalidate decisions of the general meeting of shareholders” of the open joint-stock company Dniprospetsstal. The businessman denies any involvement in the crime.
