Ukraine Recovers $44M From Frozen US Accounts of Russian-Owned Prominvestbank

The Ukrainian Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF) has transferred nearly $44 million to the state budget from Prominvestbank, a Russian bank in Ukraine nationalized after Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Prominvestbank is a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned development bank Vnesheconombank. The funds were blocked in the bankʼs correspondent account in the United States.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion, the liquidation of Prominvestbank revealed $2 million and over €36.6 million ($42.7 million) on its US correspondent account. The funds had been blocked under US sanctions targeting Prominvestbank, the DGF reported in a press release.

After Ukraine liquidated Russian assets in the country following the US sanctions, Ukraine became their legal owner and started compensating clients for the bankruptcies. This included recovering the banks’ assets abroad, though some Western companies still question the process.

In March 2025, the DGF proved in US courts that the money on Prominvestbank’s account belonged to Ukraine. Over €36.6 million and $2 million were released from frozen assets and handed to the state.

“The fund was the first to transfer assets of Russian banks to Ukraine’s budget after the full-scale invasion. It previously handled Prominvestbank and MR Bank funds, including proceeds from government bonds and debt cancellations,” the press release quoted Olga Bilay, Director of the DGF.

“The latest transfer strengthens Ukraine’s defense financing”.

How Ukraine revoked licenses, froze operations of Russian-controlled banks

On Feb.25, 2022, the day Moscow launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s central bank – the National Bank of Ukraine – decided to revoke licenses and liquidate banks controlled by Russia.

They included:

• Russian-owned banks Prominvestbank – Joint Stock Commercial and Industrial Bank (Prominvestbank PJSC), where 99.77% of the capital belonged to the Russian State Development Corporation VEB.RF.
• The MR Bank, or International Reserve Bank JSC, owned by Sberbank of Russia PJSC (holding 100% of the bank’s capital) and previously known as Russian Sberbank in Ukraine.

The financial state of both banks had started to worsen for almost a decade following Russia’s attempt to annex Ukraine’s Donbas in 2014.

Sberbank and Prominvestbank had provided loans to many of Ukraine’s largest private and state companies.

But in response to Russia’s aggression, many companies stopped paying their loans to Sberbank, a source familiar with the situation who wished to remain anonymous due to issue sensitivity told Kyiv Post in April.

Prominvestbank became a subject of the US Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions and could not legitimately proceed with operations in Ukraine or abroad.

In 2023, Ukraine’s central bank revoked the licences of the Russian subsidiary Bank Forward (previously named Russian Standard). For a year, it was untouched by Ukraine since it did not belong directly to the Russian state, unlike the other two banks. Forward’s bank owner was a Russian citizen, Rustam Tariko.

But the bank’s financial state worsened and its owner failed to improve it, so in March 2023, the NBU liquidated it from the market.

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