According to the Security Service of Ukraine, on December 5, its employees detained an illegal “bank manager” in liberated Kherson, who, at the direction of the invaders and collaborators, criminally tried to introduce a “ruble zone” in the city. It turned out to be a fake “head” of the criminal “branch” of the “International Settlements Bank”, “registered” in the Russian-occupied territory of Georgia in Tskhinvali.
SSU points that, an employee of a Ukrainian financial institution agreed to play this criminal role, and the illegal “branch” itself was located by the Russian invaders in the building of one of the state Ukrainian banks. To implement the criminal “project”, the aggressor planned to use the criminal experience of creating an extensive network of “settlement bank” in the occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Being in the “position”, the enemy henchman forced local entrepreneurs to “switch to commercial settlements in Russian rubles” and to deduct part of their income in favor of the occupation “administration”.
After the liberation of the city, the “branch manager” tried to “lay low” in the local hospital, but he was identified and detained by the SSU. It should be noted that since the spring of 2022, our Association has paid great attention to the indicated Russian invaders’ criminal attempts.
We wrote that the evasion of the Georgian authorities from responding to the activities of the “settlements bank”, as part of the committing of war crimes and massive violations of human rights with its assistance, makes this state also partially responsible for the criminal “work of a financial institution” in Kherson and Melitopol, about which our Association informed the Georgian government and authorized international structures.
After that, the aggressor changed the vector of financial occupation of mainland Ukraine and began to criminally “open” illegal “branches” of the already “purely Russian” ‘Promsvyazbank’ in the then occupied Kherson.
