On September 9, 2026, the Northern Commercial Court of Appeal added another chapter to the years-long legal battle between the National Bank of Ukraine and businessman Oleh Bakhmatyuk. The court dismissed an appeal filed by QUICKOM LIMITED and confirmed that the NBU's claims, as a creditor for refinancing loans once issued to the insolvent VAB Bank, are lawful. The court also rejected Bakhmatyuk's attempt to terminate his personal suretyship for these loans - a legal move through which he had hoped to shed personal liability for the bank's debts.
What exactly the court decided
The total amount the NBU is seeking to recover from Bakhmatyuk across various lawsuits stands at roughly UAH 7.9 billion. The September 9 ruling is not the final word: several more cases brought by the regulator over debts of VAB Bank and "Finansova Initsiatyva" Bank, also linked to Bakhmatyuk, remain pending before the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv. Earlier, on May 27, 2026, the Supreme Court had already upheld the businessman's obligation to repay the NBU UAH 1.2 billion under a VAB Bank stabilization loan. In other words, this is not a single case but an entire series of court proceedings that have dragged on for years, gradually and step by step confirming the regulator's position.
What refinancing loans are, and why recovering them takes years
To understand why this news is more than just another legal chronicle, it helps to explain what refinancing loans actually are. When a bank finds itself in financial distress and cannot meet its current obligations - for instance, paying out depositors' funds or settling with other banks - the National Bank, acting as lender of last resort, can extend it a refinancing loan. This is temporary financial support meant to keep the bank afloat while it either restores solvency or is orderly wound down.
The catch is that such loans are typically secured by collateral and personal guarantees from the bank's owners and top management, including suretyship arrangements. If the bank is later declared insolvent and the refinancing loan is never repaid, the NBU becomes one of the creditors in the bank's liquidation process. And if the bank's own assets are insufficient to cover the debt, the regulator turns to those who personally guaranteed the loan - former owners or companies linked to them. This exact mechanism lies at the heart of the case against Bakhmatyuk: VAB Bank was declared insolvent back in 2014–2015, and the legal fight to recover the refinancing loans issued to it continues to this day, more than a decade later.
Why this is not an abstract legal story
At first glance, a billionaire's dispute with the regulator might seem far removed from the everyday life of an ordinary bank customer. In reality, though, it has a direct bearing on how stable and predictable the entire banking system we all rely on actually is.
- Recovered funds ease the burden on the state. Refinancing loans were issued from NBU resources, and their non-repayment is effectively a lost public resource. Every hryvnia recovered through the courts means less strain on the budget and on the system as a whole.
- It sends a signal to bank owners. When the regulator persistently and consistently wins these cases over the years, it sets a precedent: bank owners cannot simply walk away and leave debts to the state once their financial institution has collapsed. Personal suretyship for refinancing loans is not a formality - it is a real accountability tool.
- It affects trust in the sector. Depositor trust in the banking system is built not only on the reputation of an individual bank, but also on how consistently the state acts when something goes wrong. The VAB Bank story shows that even after an institution disappears from the market, the fight to recover money and hold those responsible accountable does not stop for years.
Lessons for depositors: why recovering money after a bank collapse is so hard
The Bakhmatyuk and VAB Bank saga is a vivid illustration of just how complex, lengthy and unpredictable the process of recovering funds after a financial institution's collapse can be. This is not a matter of a few months of paperwork, but years of litigation across multiple court instances, appeals, offshore structures such as QUICKOM LIMITED, and parallel proceedings in different courts. Even with both the Supreme Court and the appellate court on its side, the state still has not fully completed the debt-recovery process a full decade after the bank's collapse.
For an ordinary bank customer, a few practical conclusions follow. First, funds held in deposits up to the guaranteed amount are protected by the Deposit Guarantee Fund regardless of how long such litigation drags on - that safety cushion exists precisely so depositors do not have to depend on whether the state eventually manages to recover debts from former owners years later. Second, it makes sense to be deliberate when choosing a bank for your savings, weighing institutional reliability rather than chasing the highest rate alone. Before opening a deposit, it is worth comparing terms across banks - for example, by checking the current ranking of the best fixed deposits or savings accounts on BankSorter, where real conditions from different banks are collected.
The same logic applies to everyday banking: if you are choosing where to open a personal account, it is worth considering not just a convenient app or fee-free perks, but the bank's overall stability. And for anyone planning to take out a loan, this debt-recovery story is a reminder that the banking system works the same way in both directions - strict repayment rules apply to borrowers and creditors alike, so it is worth comparing terms in advance on the loans ranking page to find transparent and favourable conditions.
Bottom line
The Northern Commercial Court of Appeal's ruling of September 9, 2026 is not merely another episode in a case against one particular businessman. It confirms that Ukraine's system for recovering debts from former owners of collapsed banks, while slow, does work consistently: more than a decade after VAB Bank's collapse, the regulator has not given up on recovering the funds, and courts are dismissing the debtor's attempts to escape liability one after another. For the ordinary depositor, the main takeaway is simple: the banking system remains under scrutiny, and accountability for a financial institution's collapse does not disappear along with the bank itself. In the meantime, the best way to protect your own savings is to choose your bank and product carefully - not to assume that problems, if they arise, will simply resolve themselves.