By KYIV. Nov 8 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Kyiv District Court has decided to transfer Alfa trademarks used by Alfa-Bank Ukraine to the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA), the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine (BES) reported.
It is indicated that officials of the Ukrainian Alfa-Bank, using the trademarks of the Cypriot offshore company, carried out the withdrawal of the bank’s assets under the guise of paying royalties.
The BES, referring to the results of the investigation, claims that the trademarks previously belonged to the parent bank in the Russian Federation, and in 2021, in order to use preferential taxation conditions, they were re-registered for a Cypriot non-resident. In less than a year of using these signs, estimated by the BES at UAH 2 billion, the private bank in Ukraine paid more than UAH 248 million to the Cypriot non-resident.
The head of the supervisory board of Alfa-Bank Ukraine, Roman Shpek, in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine at the end of September denied accusations of excessive payment of royalties.
"If you look at how much Alfa-Bank and other Ukrainian banks paid, then we are somewhere in the middle. We are not the bank that pays the most for royalties," he argued.
As reported earlier, law enforcement officers announced the seizure of the assets of Cypriot companies in the amount of more than UAH 469 million, which are on the accounts of Alfa-Bank Ukraine, as well as 42.4% of the bank’s shares, which belong to the holding company ABHU.
In turn, the bank stressed that it is operating normally, it is managed by the board and supervisory board.
