Ihor Kolomoisky

Ihor Valeriyovych Kolomoyskyi ( uk, Ігор Валерійович Коломойський, translit=Ihor Valereriyovych Kolomoyskyi; he, איגור קולומויסקי; born 13 February 1963) is a Ukrainian-born billionaire, business magnate, and politician.

He has been rated as the second or third richest person in Ukraine, and was seen as one of the most influential oligarchs. He co-founded PrivatBank and its informal extension of companies, Privat Group, in 1992, and acquired extensive media holdings. Kolomoyskyi served as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from 2014 until his dismissal by President Petro Poroshenko in 2016. That year, following charges against him of large-scale fraud, PrivatBank was taken into state ownership. Kolomoyskyi's media power and funding then supported
Volodymyr Zelenskyy's successful 2019 campaign to unseat Poroshenko.

In 2021, the US banned Kolomoyskyi and his family from entering the country, accusing him of corruption and being a threat to the Ukrainian public's faith in democratic institutions. In July 2022, responding to an ongoing US criminal investigation and following an apparent falling out, Zelenskyy controversially stripped Kolomoyskyi of his Ukrainian citzenship.

Early life and education

Kolomoyskyi was born into a Jewish family in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Both parents had graduated in engineering. His mother worked at the university and father in a metallurgical plant. Already in his childhood he was considered to be very determined, diligent and serious, was enthusiastic about sports, and liked to play chess. Professionally, he followed the example of his parents. After graduating from the Gymnasium 21 in Dnipro with the Komsomol badge "For outstanding school performance", in 1980 he took up graduate studies in engineering at the Leonid Brezhnev Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute (now the National Metallurgical Academy of Ukraine), graduating in 1985.

As a Komsomol activist, Kolomoyskyi was involved in the so-called "disco movement"—an attempt by the authorities to promote an ideological safe alternative to the growing, underground, rebroadcast and performance of "Anglo-American" rock music including, in the 80s, heavy metal and punk. Kolomoyskyi used his role in organising approved dance venues and concerts to begin his trading career, as did others in his position, several of whom would go on to play prominent roles in post-Soviet national politics, among them Yulia Tymoshenko, Victor Pinchuk, Serhiy Tihipko, and Oleksandr Turchynov.The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music and Social Class
ed. Ian Peddie, New York / London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, , page 318 + 319

Name

The transliteration of Ihor Kolomoyskyi's name into English has numerous variants including Igor, or Ihor for his first name, and Kolomoyskyi, Kolomoysky, Kolomoisky, Kolomoiskiy, or Kolomoyskiy for his surname.

Kolomoyskyi uses the nickname ''Benya'' (russian: Беня), an invocation of the infamous Ukrainian (and Jewish) criminal reprobate ''Benya Krik'', popularly fictionalized in Isaac Babel's '' Odessa Stories''. Occasionally, Kolomoyskyi is called ''Bonifatsiy'' (the eponymous star of the popular Soviet cartoon " Каникулы Бонифация" (''Bonifacy's holidays'' by Soyuzmultfilm (1965)).

Business career

In 1990, with two other graduates from Dnipropetrovsk universities, Gennadiy Bogolyubov and Oleksiy Martynov, Kolomoyskyi created a joint enterprise marketing office equipment bought in Moscow. After the collapse of the USSR, the partners, joined by the son of a major Soviet entrepreneur, Leonid Miloslavsky, began to import foreign goods - from sneakers and sportswear to telephones. To pay for the imports, Kolomoyskyi arranged the export of steel products. Soon they realized the greater profits to be made in internationally trading the locally sourced ores and metal. Among other operations, their Privat group supplied fuel to the mining company Pokrovsky (Ordzhonikidzevsky) GOK, receiving in return manganese ore for export.

In March 1992, the four companies of the Privat Group established Privatbank CJSC. Unlike state-owned banks, Privat willingly served private entrepreneurs and in 1995 participated aggressively in the voucher scheme for the privatization of state assets. With the blessing of Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma (also from Dnipro, and whose successful presidential campaign in 1994 Kolomoyskyi and his partners later funded), PrivatBank was also the only Ukrainian lender to receive permission from the National Bank of Ukraine to open overseas branches. One branch in Latvia, established in 1992, was later implicated in the 2014 Moldovan bank fraud scandal