Ihor Kolomoisky

Ukrainian-born businessman, co-founder and former controlling shareholder of PrivatBank, governor of Dnipropetrovsk region in 2014–15 and a leading patron of the Chabad-led Jewish community of Dnipro. Held civilly liable by the English courts for a US$1.9 billion misappropriation from PrivatBank; designated by the US State Department for corruption; in pre-trial detention in Ukraine since 2023.

Ihor Kolomoisky
Nationality	Ukrainian, Israeli and Cypriot (per the English High Court, 2025); stripped of Ukrainian citizenship by the time of the 2025 judgment
Residence	Ukraine (until 2003 and from 2019); Geneva, Switzerland (resident from 2010)
Occupation	Businessman; co-owner of the Privat group; governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (2014–2015)
Known for	PrivatBank (co-founder; controlling shareholder with Gennadiy Bogolyubov until nationalisation in December 2016); funding of the Menorah Centre, Dnipro; president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine

Ihor Kolomoisky (Ukrainian: Ігор Валерійович Коломойський; also spelled Igor Kolomoisky, Ihor Kolomoyskyy or Kolomoyskyi; in English court records Igor Valeryevich Kolomoisky) is a Ukrainian businessman. With his partner Gennadiy Bogolyubov he was a founding shareholder of PrivatBank, Ukraine's largest bank, until it was nationalised in December 2016. He was governor of Dnipropetrovsk region from 2014 to early 2015. He and Bogolyubov were among the main funders of the Menorah Centre in Dnipro, the headquarters of the Chabad-led Jewish community of the city. The Times of Israel has described him as "a major funder of Jewish causes and the Chabad movement in Ukraine".

His legal position has several strands, and each has a different legal status:

• Civil liability (England). In 2025 the English High Court held him and Bogolyubov liable to PrivatBank for a US$1.9 billion misappropriation, and the Court of Appeal dismissed their appeal in 2026. These are civil findings, not a criminal conviction.
• Government designation (United States). In 2021 the US Secretary of State publicly designated him for "involvement in significant corruption". This is an executive finding, not a court ruling.
• Allegation (United States). US civil forfeiture complaints allege that PrivatBank money was laundered into American property. No forfeiture judgment has been found.
• Allegation (Ukraine). Since September 2023 he has been held in pre-trial detention in Ukraine on suspicion of fraud and money laundering, and later of ordering an attempted murder. No conviction has been found as of October 2026.

He has denied wrongdoing.

Background

According to the English High Court, Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov "are well-known Ukrainian businessmen who have had interests in a wide range of different businesses including not just the banking sector but also ferroalloys, media, oil and gas trading and real estate". They "have been close friends and business partners since the early 1990s". The court recorded that both "are or were Ukrainian, Israeli and Cypriot nationals".

The court found that Kolomoisky "lived in Ukraine until 2003 when he began to spend much of his time in France, Israel and Switzerland, becoming a Swiss resident based in Geneva in 2010". He returned to Ukraine in 2019. By the time of the July 2025 judgment he had "been stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship" and was "now in prison". Between 2010 and nationalisation he and Bogolyubov "together owned a controlling stake in the Bank, although each of them held less than 50% of the shares, and they both sat on the Bank's Supervisory Board".

Chabad and Jewish communal role

Dnipro and the Menorah Centre

The Jewish community of Dnipro (formerly Dnepropetrovsk) is led by Rabbi Shmuel Kaminezki, the city's chief rabbi and Chabad emissary, who arrived in 1990. In 2008 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported that "Two partners in the Privat group industrial holding, Gennady Bogolubov and Igor Kolomoysky, are funding the center and an attached Holocaust museum, respectively".

Chabad.org reported that the Menorah Centre opened in October 2012. It said the project was "spearheaded by philanthropist Gennady Bogolubov, president of the local Jewish community and chairman of the Ukrainian Jewish Congress, and his Privat banking partner Igor Kolomoyskyy". At the opening the head of the regional administration "expressed deep gratitude to Bogolubov and Kolomoyskyy" (Chabad-side). In 2008 JTA reported that the planned building was also to house the national headquarters of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine, the Chabad-led umbrella body. For the building itself, see Menorah Centre.

In 2014 JTA wrote that "Non-Jews sometimes refer to the center as the Kolomoisky building — Igor Kolomoisky, a Jewish billionaire, funded the building with fellow Ukrainian billionaire Gennady Bogolyubov, the president of the Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk".

Editor's note: the 2008 and 2014 JTA reports divide the funding differently. No source found gives each man's contribution or says which bank or company accounts the money came from. Nothing in the court judgments cited on this page links the Menorah Centre to the funds in dispute.

Communal offices

Kolomoisky was elected president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine in 2008 and re-elected in October 2012. In 2011 he and Vadim Rabinovich founded the European Jewish Union. The United Jewish Community of Ukraine is not a Chabad body. In 2005 it was one of the two organisations, both headed by Rabinovich, that elected the Chabad-ordained Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman "chief rabbi of Ukraine", in competition with the candidate of the Chabad-led federation. See Chabad and Ukraine.

Associates in Miami

Two Miami businessmen named in the US forfeiture cases as associates of Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov, Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber, have Chabad backgrounds. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "Korf and Laber both belong to the movement"; Korf arrived in Dnipro in 1991, and Laber followed in 1994. Their private foundations, the Korf Family Foundation and the Laber Foundation, gave mainly to Chabad-Lubavitch institutions in the United States and to the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS. Korf and Laber are not defendants in the US cases. They deny wrongdoing, and no criminal charge against either man has been found. The year-by-year returns are tabulated on the two foundation pages.

Governor of Dnipropetrovsk, 2014–2015

In April 2014, after the Maidan revolution and the outbreak of fighting in the east, Kolomoisky became governor of Dnipropetrovsk region. JTA wrote that he had "become something of a national hero since making sizable donations to the ill-equipped Ukrainian army". The Guardian reported on 17 April 2014 that he "offered a $10,000 (£6,000) bounty on Thursday for the capture of any Russian 'saboteur'".

Status: press reports, statements by Kolomoisky's officials and academic analysis; no court finding. The political scientist Andreas Umland writes that "In spring 2014, the Dnipropetrovs'k regional administration, under its then head Ihor Kolomoys'kyy, played apparently a crucial role in the first spontaneous creation and military usage of voluntary battalions, including Azov". The BBC reported that Kolomoisky "says that he does not pay the fighters out of his own pocket, but is only one of the donors to a fund to which other businessmen and companies also contribute" (translated from Russian). The detailed evidence on individual battalions, including Azov, Donbas, Aidar and Right Sector, and the denials, is set out on Chabad and Ukraine. No source found says that any Chabad body, or the Menorah Centre, funded the battalions.

Legal proceedings

The proceedings below have different legal statuses. A civil finding on the balance of probabilities is not a criminal conviction, a government designation is not a court ruling, and a complaint or a notice of suspicion is an allegation.

PrivatBank v Kolomoisky (England): civil liability

Status: civil liability; not a criminal conviction.

Jurisdiction (2019). PrivatBank sued Kolomoisky, Bogolyubov and six companies in the High Court in London in December 2017. In December 2018 Fancourt J declared that the court had no jurisdiction over the claims against the two men and, subject to appeal, discharged a worldwide freezing order "restraining each of them from disposing of assets with a value of up to US$2.6 billion". On 15 October 2019 the Court of Appeal (David Richards, Flaux and Newey LJJ) allowed the bank's appeal and held that the English courts had jurisdiction.

Trial and judgment (2025). After a 43-day trial in 2023, Trower J gave judgment on 30 July 2025. He held that Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov were "jointly and severally liable to the Bank for compensation for the harm it sustained on the making of the Relevant Drawdowns", quantified at "US$1,911,877,385 less the real value of the Transferred Assets". Neither man gave evidence or attended for cross-examination on his witness statement. The value of the transferred assets was later agreed at US$149,919,593, leaving a principal sum of US$1,761,957,792.

Appeal (2026). On 22 May 2026 the Court of Appeal (Arnold LJ, Nugee LJ and Sir Launcelot Henderson) dismissed the two men's appeal. It summarised the trial judge's findings:

"The Appellants had procured the Misappropriation between November 2013 and September 2014, using their control of the Bank and a network of shell companies. They did so by instructing their associates at the Bank to effect 270 fraudulent drawdowns ... The Appellants were the ultimate beneficiaries of this fraudulent scheme: the funds extracted from the Bank ended up funding the Appellants' businesses through a process of money-laundering so complex it was impossible to trace."

The appeal was confined to their "Repayment Defence", the argument that the loans had been repaid. Arnold LJ noted that the trial judgment had taken "over 20 months" to produce but held that this did not help the appellants, because "most of his findings are unchallenged".

Editor's note: these are findings of a civil court on the balance of probabilities, made under Article 1166 of the Ukrainian Civil Code. They are not a criminal conviction. Counsel for the bank stated that the judgment upheld was "for over US$ 3 billion"; the sources used here do not explain the difference between that figure and the principal of about US$1.76 billion. This page has not seen the consequentials judgment ([2025] EWHC 2909 (Ch)) and does not rely on it.

United States: visa designation

Status: government designation (executive finding, not a court ruling). On 5 March 2021 Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced "the public designation of oligarch and former Ukrainian public official Ihor Kolomoyskyy due to his involvement in significant corruption". He stated that "In his official capacity as a Governor of Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from 2014 to 2015, Kolomoyskyy was involved in corrupt acts that undermined rule of law and the Ukrainian public's faith in their government's democratic institutions and public processes, including using his political influence and official power for his personal benefit". The designation, under Section 7031(c) of the State Department's 2020 appropriations act, also covers his wife, daughter and son, and "renders Ihor Kolomoyskyy and each of these members of his immediate family ineligible for entry into the United States".

United States: civil forfeiture cases

Status: allegation. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has brought four civil forfeiture actions in rem in the Southern District of Florida, against office property in Louisville, Dallas and Cleveland and against a promissory note from the sale of Stemmons Towers in Dallas. According to the DoJ, the complaints "allege that Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Boholiubov ... embezzled and defrauded the bank of billions of dollars", and that their associates "created a web of entities, usually under some variation of the name 'Optima,' to further launder the misappropriated funds". The DoJ added: "A complaint is merely an allegation and all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law." In May 2023 the DoJ told the court that "All four civil actions are also closely entwined with an ongoing criminal investigation". No judgment of forfeiture, settlement or final ruling has been found as of October 2026. In 2022 the Miami Herald reported that Kolomoisky "has not been criminally charged" in the United States.

Related proceedings.

• Investment treaty arbitration. Three Optima companies brought a claim against the United States under the 1994 Ukraine–US bilateral investment treaty (ICSID Case No. ARB/21/11), concerning the Dallas and Cleveland forfeitures. On 19 January 2024 the tribunal dismissed the United States' objection under ICSID Arbitration Rule 41(5). The case is listed as pending. Its latest development, dated 20 August 2025, is that "The proceeding is suspended pursuant to the parties' agreement".
• Freedom of Information Act case. In 2025 Korf and Laber sued the State Department for records about themselves and PrivatBank (Korf v. United States Department of State). On 1 June 2026 a magistrate judge recommended that their motion for summary judgment be granted.
• Delaware. In 2019 PrivatBank sued Kolomoisky, Bogolyubov, Korf and Laber in the Delaware Court of Chancery. In August 2021 the court stayed the claims pending litigation in Ukraine.

Response. Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov have said that the money for the US assets came from the sale of their steel business to Evraz. In a court filing, the DoJ described Ukrainian court rulings in their favour as the product of "a campaign of strategic litigation in Ukraine specifically designed to thwart that U.S. litigation".

Ukraine: criminal proceedings

Status: allegation (suspected; no conviction found as of October 2026). On 2 September 2023 a Kyiv court ordered Kolomoisky held in pre-trial detention on suspicion of fraud and money laundering. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that "during 2013-2020, Ihor Kolomoisky legalised more than half a billion hryvnias [$14m] by withdrawing them abroad and using the infrastructure of banks under [his] control". His lawyers said he would appeal. He was later served with a notice of suspicion of ordering the attempted murder of the lawyer Serhiy Karpenko in 2003; the notice was served on 8 May 2024. On 15 October 2026 a Kyiv district court extended his detention in that case to 13 December 2026.

Kolomoisky and Zelensky

According to the BBC, Kolomoisky's TV channel "gave Mr Zelensky his break with the comedy series Servant of the People, before he backed the former actor's bid for the presidency". Zelensky "has repeatedly denied that Mr Kolomoisky has had any influence over the government". After the 2023 detention Zelensky said there would be no return to "business as usual for those who plundered Ukraine and put themselves above the law".

See also

• Chabad and Ukraine
• Chabad Lubavitch of Ukraine
• Korf Family Foundation
• Laber Foundation
• Menorah Centre
• Shmuel Kaminezki
• Russian oligarchs and Chabad
• Chabad and fraud