NBU Chairwoman Valeria Gontareva resigns from May 10. Her resignation notice lies on the table of the President; her resignation needs to be approved by the Verkhovna Rada.

On Monday, April 10, Gontareva came out for the press conference where she announced about her resignation. The main theses of her speech: she makes a virtue of “cutting back” of the banking system, the switch to the flexible exchange rate, the monetary policy of the inflation targeting and political indifference of the regulators, Elisejournal reports.

“We look to the future positively”, Gontareva said, enumerating some debtor banks: Nadra of Dmitri Firtash (9.8 bln), Delta of Nikolai Lagun (8 bln), Financial Initiative and VAB of Oleg Bakhmatiuk (7.2 and 3 bln respectively), Finance and Credit of Constantine Zhevago (6.3 bln).

However, the resignation of Gontareva stirs up the delayed financial crisis. “NBU contributed to siphoning funds from banks into the lending of the government through the purchase of securities: only, in this January-March, the banks purchased government bonds for UAH 29.5 bln”, said ex-Minister of Economy Victor Suslov. In general, the debt liabilities of the Cabinet of Ministers to business entities reached UAH 285 bln (and UAH 383 bln along with obligations – to NBU).

According to Suslov, this all will burst like a bubble, bringing down the economy of our country.

“The non-payment of debts of the Cabinet of Ministers will threaten with the liquidation of the banking system. There are separate opinions that this is what Gontareva tried to achieve, cleaning the Ukrainian banking field for foreign banks”, the ex-Minister of Finance said.