KYIV — Ihor Kolomoisky once owned Ukraine’s richest bank, a TV station that carried a popular show starring a comedian named Volodymyr Zelensky, and fielded a private militia to defend his home city of Dnipro when it was under threat from Russian-backed separatists in 2014.Today, he sits behind bars, awaiting the outcome of two investigations and at risk of losing everything.
But arguably no one has fallen as far as Kolomoisky, an oil, banking and media mogul who was once valued at $2 billion, and who was considered a close supporter with major influence on Zelensky, the comedian-turned-president. Zelensky starred in a number of shows on Kolomoisky’s television channel, including as an unlikely president in “Servant of the People.”In 2019, Kolomoisky helped Zelensky win the real job, thwarting Petro Poroshenko’s bid for a second term.
Kolomoisky was once widely regarded to be untouchable legally, given his connections and immense wealth. He was also one of the more flamboyant tycoons to emerge from Ukraine’s first cutthroat decades of independence: a large man, with a shock of curly hair and bushy beard, who earlier kept a shark aquarium in his offices.
Then in 2021, the United States imposed sanctions against Kolomoisky and members of his family under a U.S. law that allows penalizingsaid Kolomoisky 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” while serving as governor of Dnipropetrovsk region.After Russia initially invaded Ukraine in 2014, acting president Oleksandr Turchynov appointed Kolomoisky.
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