Bankers’ strategy or Bankova’s: Why do state-owned banks need Gulliver?

Author: Vasyl Melnyk

A triumph of creditors over debtors: state-owned banks have seized one of the country’s largest shopping malls, Gulliver, over unpaid debts. At least, that is how it is being presented publicly. Yet behind the façade of victory, less appealing details emerge: rushed registration actions, late-night decisions, and figures from the orbit of the President’s Office. Thus, the main question arises: who is the primary beneficiary of the entire operation?

The Gulliver multifunctional complex, located in central Kyiv, combines two Class A business center towers and a 10-story shopping mall. The tallest tower of the business center rises 33 floors and reaches 141 meters, making it one of the highest buildings in Ukraine. The total area of the Gulliver complex is 157,400 square meters.

Construction of Gulliver began in 2003. In 2006, the former owners secured $61.6 million from Oschadbank and Ukreximbank. This was the first syndicated loan in Ukraine and, at the time, a record sum. The 2008 financial crisis derailed the plans, and in 2012, the unfinished mall was acquired by now-sanctioned businessman Viktor Polishchuk through the company Try O LLC.

According to Try O, when Polishchuk entered the Gulliver project, the debt of the previous owners had already reached about $300 million. The new owner undertook to repay the entire foreign currency loan of the previous beneficiaries. At that time, the building consisted essentially of a monolithic frame structure, partially glazed on the façade side. To complete, equip, and launch the complex, Try O invested its own funds and raised additional bank financing of about $100 million.

After 2014, the devaluation of the hryvnia and the war hit the project’s economy: rental income was insufficient, debts mounted. In 2020, a $675 million restructuring was carried out with a repayment term until 2044, but the pandemic and Russia’s new full-scale invasion in 2022 again undermined the complex’s revenues. In July 2025, Oschadbank and Ukreximbank refused further negotiations and seized Gulliver into their ownership. Try O confirmed the transfer of the complex, but the banks stated they had not received all the documents.

Business Censor examined how this process unfolded, what the state-owned banks obtained, and what they plan to do with one of the largest commercial real estate assets in the capital.

What did the state-owned banks get (and how much could they lose)?

Oschadbank and Ukreximbank foreclosed on Gulliver and booked the asset to their balance sheets for approximately $130 million. The remaining $370 million of the loan will have to be recovered through very lengthy and very costly proceedings in Ukrainian and international courts, wrote Yulian Khorunzhyi, senior partner at Ario Law Firm and one of the legal advisors to Try O LLC, on his Facebook page.

How much of this $370 million will ultimately be recovered is hard to say, but it "definitely won’t be 100% of that amount," the lawyer added.

Oschadbank assured that an independent valuation of the multifunctional complex was carried out before the foreclosure procedure, but did not specify its book value.

"The valuation was conducted by a reputable international appraiser, Deloitte. Its results differ only slightly from the assessments previously commissioned by the debtor after the war began. For now, the banks are not ready to disclose its value due to commercial considerations," Oschadbank Deputy Chairman of the Management Board Arsen Miliutin told Business Censor in response to a request.

Yulian Khorunzhyi added that the state-owned banks could have recovered the full amount of the debt: in March, Gulliver’s owner, Try O, initiated a preventive restructuring procedure with the participation of creditors. According to him, this could have been the first case in Ukraine of applying this mechanism in line with EU Directive 2019/1023. Instead, however, Oschadbank opted to foreclose on the mortgaged asset itself—Gulliver.

"It is not that the bank’s intentions were unreadable, they were absolutely clear. However, the client continued to hope in good faith until the very end that his final proposal for restructuring the loan was so attractive that a successful outcome of the negotiations was virtually inevitable," noted the senior partner at Ario Law Firm, who advised Gulliver’s owner during the preparation of the preventive restructuring.

According to him, during this process, Try O proposed transferring Gulliver to the banks’ ownership for the same $130 million, while simultaneously obtaining it under a 15-year financial lease. Over this period, the owner would repay both the value of the complex and the remaining $370 million debt with interest.

"In other words, the banks were taking no risk, since the mall would in any case remain in their ownership until full repayment, and failure to make even a single lease payment would terminate the lease," the lawyer explained.

Notably, Oschadbank has already used a similar mechanism for another real estate asset: the bank recently held an auction to transfer, under a 10-year financial lease, the 22-story four-star Ramada Encore hotel and the Europa business center in Kyiv. Initially, the bank expected 1.8 billion hryvnias, but after several unsuccessful sale attempts, the property was transferred into financial leasing for 10 years at more than half that price.

In Gulliver’s case, however, the decision turned out differently. Oschadbank Deputy Chairman Arsen Miliutin confirmed that after the initial shock of the full-scale war, Gulliver’s owner gradually resumed payments, and the state-owned banks actively negotiated the prospects for debt repayment.

"By spring 2024, forecasts suggested a full restoration of the financial restructuring model, with only the wartime shortfalls of the first period left to be settled. In view of this, and also given the debtor’s complicated relations with the tax authorities, which even led to the building being seized, the banks reached an agreement with the debtor to carry out a new financial restructuring. The key element of this was to be a sale-and-leaseback mechanism for the building," Miliutin said.

However, according to Miliutin, in the autumn of 2024 Gulliver’s owner stopped servicing the debt, and the banks in turn initiated legal procedures to recover the arrears.

In addition, under the preventive restructuring plan, the debtor had proposed to direct the entire cash flow into rebuilding a destroyed warehouse in Brovary, the banker added.

"In fact, as far as the banks are aware, he was already doing that without consulting the creditors. But without going into details, this proposal was unacceptable at least because Ukreximbank had rights to 20% of Gulliver’s free cash flow and had nothing to do with the destroyed warehouse. Thus, this proposal only ‘added fuel to the fire’: what kind of good faith can be spoken of if he simply ignored the consortium’s second member?" Miliutin argued.

According to him, this was precisely why the state-owned banks decided to end negotiations on debt restructuring.

Business Censor asked Ukreximbank whether the decision to foreclose on the complex into the banks’ ownership was indeed made because the debtor had failed to take Exim’s interests into account. The bank replied that it "does not possess such information" and advised "seeking comments from the direct source of information."

However, it added that all possible options for resolving the debt had been studied and examined, taking into account the history of debt servicing, without providing further details.

"The borrower’s failure to comply with previous agreements in the autumn of 2024, when conditions similar to preventive restructuring were being considered in the financial restructuring procedure, was taken into account. Following a systemic analysis of possible options for debt resolution, the creditor banks chose a strategy that, among other things, provided for acquiring the property, the Gulliver complex, into ownership," Ukreximbank’s press service stated.

For their part, representatives of Try O acknowledged that the company had decided to temporarily redirect part of the cash flow intended for servicing the debt toward rebuilding the destroyed warehouse, which was also pledged as collateral under Oschadbank’s loan.

However, in their view, despite a formal breach of the payment schedule, this step was logical from the creditor’s own economic perspective: it was about restoring a business that was pledged as collateral and which, once rebuilt, could generate income. This, in turn, would have allowed repayment to the banks.

"This would have allowed the state-owned bank to avoid additional provisioning to cover the collateral’s value and, in the long run, to receive more repayments on the loan secured by this restored asset," the company explained.

Oschadbank described the debtor’s position on restoring its collateral as time-wasting and creating additional legal risks.

"The remnants of trust were completely destroyed by the debtor in 2024," said Oschadbank Deputy Chairman Arsen Miliutin.

"Good deeds are not done at night"?

Separately, Try O pointed out that the very process of foreclosing Gulliver in favor of the state-owned banks raises many questions and requires further assessment. In particular, changes to the register were made overnight on Saturday, July 26. Moreover, shortly before that, the company’s ownership structure had been altered within an extremely tight timeframe, the ultimate beneficial owner was removed from the corporate register.

The crucial point is that this concerns businessman Viktor Polishchuk. On April 12, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy enacted an NSDC decision to impose sanctions on him, including asset freezes. According to Forbes, the main reason for the sanctions against Polishchuk was the alleged supply by his Eldorado retail chain of Russian-made equipment disguised as Chinese for resale in Ukraine.

In response to a request from BusinessCensor, the Ministry of Justice explained that on July 25 it had received a complaint from Oschadbank’s lawyer against the actions of a notary who entered Polishchuk as a Try O beneficiary in the state register. That same day, the Ministry granted the complaint and ordered the cancellation of the sanctioned businessman’s registration as a beneficiary of the company. Later that day, on July 25, a Ministry of Justice official executed the order.

The order to cancel the registration of Viktor Polishchuk as a beneficiary of the company was personally signed by the Minister of Justice Herman Halushchenko.

The formal reason for canceling Polishchuk’s registration as a company beneficiary was that the certificates of his two Cypriot companies, which indirectly appear in Try O’s ownership structure, had been issued more than one month before the date of submission for registration.

In other words, all the actions required to register the ownership ofGulliver with state-owned banks were carried out in an extremely short time - just one day.

Ario Law Firm's senior partner Yulian Khorunzhyi notes that such a practice is rare.

"Good deeds are not done at night. It has been a very long time since I encountered the state carrying out registration actions at night, especially on a Friday-to-Saturday night. For some reason, the state lately finds it very appealing to do everything in a single day, no matter how awkward it looks," the lawyer said.

Ernest Hramatskyi, PhD in Law and President of Gramatskyi & Partners Law Firm, noted that the practice of carrying out registration actions outside working hours is a recognized problem and one of the statutory indicators requiring special oversight of state registrars.

He pointed out that in a number of cases the Supreme Court upheld the cancellation of registration actions performed in violation of procedural requirements, including outside working hours, but only where the complainant’s rights had been infringed.

"Particularly problematic are cases where private notaries perform registration actions at night without proper justification of urgency. Practice shows that such violations often correlate with raider attacks or attempts to circumvent sanctions restrictions… Of course, it is not always part of some criminal scheme, but I do not know a single normal notary who would suddenly open the register at night and start re-registering property or companies," the lawyer said.

As an example, he cited the attempted raider takeover of the Novus supermarket chain in 2016, when a rural registrar illegally re-registered corporate rights worth 1 billion hryvnias to proxy individuals around midnight. Only the intervention of the police and Ministry of Justice officials the next day allowed those night-time changes to be reversed. This was a "lucky case," when the owners and lawyers reacted immediately.

Hramatskyi also recalled that over the past two years there were several high-profile cases where attempts were made to remove individuals subject to NSDC sanctions from the list of company beneficiaries. These included businessman Vadym Novynskyi and the beneficiaries of the UNIGRAN group of companies. However, unlike the Gulliver case, in those instances the Ministry of Justice canceled the registration actions concerning the change of sanctioned beneficiaries.

According to the lawyer, there are examples where Ministry of Justice decisions were challenged in court and the courts found them unlawful, but there is still no established practice on this issue.

"Nevertheless, the general trend is clear: removing sanctioned individuals from the Unified State Register without proper grounds is regarded as an attempt to circumvent sanctions," Hramatskyi stressed.

In addition, Try O notes that there are at least two further circumstances that raise questions regarding Gulliver’s re-registration process.

Specifically, by court order the multifunctional complex itself had been seized in a Bureau of Economic Security investigation, and under another court ruling Gulliver was transferred, at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, to the Asset Recovery and Management Agency (ARMA), which for more than six months unsuccessfully tried to appoint a manager for it.

Oshchadbank claims that the seizure of Gulliver did not affect the banks’ mortgage rights, which had arisen earlier, and that once the seizure was lifted, the tender to select a manager for Gulliver should have been canceled. However, as recently became known, the tender was nonetheless held, a winner was chosen, but the state-owned banks oppose such "unilateral actions" by ARMA.

Cui bono: Who might need Gulliver?

Try O suggests that the state-owned banks’ decision to seize Gulliver into their ownership may have been influenced externally. The company claims that even earlier, initiatives in debt restructuring talks with Oschadbank were often suspended for long periods.

"It seems that at certain times economic arguments gave way to other motives, and the complex itself may already have had an interested party that influenced the state-owned bank’s decisions," Try O stated.

It is noteworthy that Oleksandr Bevz, a member of the supervisory board of Ukreximbank, was the first to announce the transfer of ownership of Gulliver to state-owned banks, while Rosa Tapanova, a member of the supervisory board of Oschadbank, was the first to give details about the future of the complex.

They are both associated with the head of the President's Office, Andriy Yermak. Bevz has served as Yermak’s freelance advisor on international communications, while Tapanova is his longtime business partner—she was director and co-founder of the International Law Company law firm when Yermak was its co-owner.

In addition, Oleksandr Bevz began his career at the law firm Sayenko Kharenko, which Oschadbank engaged to handle the Gulliver case.

The speed with which decisions were made to foreclose Gulliver in favor of the state-owned banks, with the involvement of Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko, may also indicate the President’s Office’s involvement. According to Ukrainska Pravda, since last year Halushchenko has been closely aligned with Yermak.

It is worth noting that immediately after the change of ownership of Gulliver, Oschadbank supervisory board member Roza Tapanova stated that the asset management strategy could involve either transferring the property to management or selling it. She also suggested that Gulliver could be purchased by someone from Ukrainian business circles.

"I think so. Deals are already taking place, major properties are being built—there is interest. This is a unique asset in good condition, right in the city center. It is popular. Foreign companies are already operating there, and it could be a profitable investment," Tapanova said.

She did not respond to a request for additional comments for this article.

Real estate market sources claim that Gulliver may have attracted businessman Maksym Kryppa. Almost unknown to the public until 2022, he has become the main buyer of Kyiv real estate in recent years, as demand fell due to wartime risks.

And these are landmark properties. In the fall of 2023, Krippa purchased the Parus business center from MP Vadym Stolar. According to Forbes, the deal could have been worth $80–100 million. Then, in September 2024, his company privatized the Hotel Ukraina on Independence Square, paying about 3 billion hryvnias for it. By early 2025, Kryppa had become a co-owner of the DIM development company.

Sources of Ekonomichna Pravda suggested that Kryppa might be acting as a "cover" for investing the money of several highly influential Ukrainian officials in valuable assets. However, he firmly denied such claims, calling the publication’s article an information attack.

Maksym Kryppa has also officially denied any interest in managing or purchasing Gulliver.

"We take a measured approach to developments on Kyiv’s real estate market, monitoring trends and investment opportunities. In our assessment, the Gulliver mall holds no interest: it is neither attractive, promising, nor significant as an asset. Our investment portfolio already includes truly unique development projects in the capital. It is on their further growth that we are focused," the businessman said in an official comment provided through his MK Foundation charity.

Non-core asset: What will state-owned banks do with Gulliver?

"Managing such an asset is not the banks’ business, and it was never their goal," said Oschadbank Deputy Chairman Arsen Miliutin.

However, according to him, for now it is the state-owned banks themselves that will manage the asset, though they are currently facing difficulties with the transfer of communications and gaining access to certain parts of the building.

The banks are now re-signing agreements with tenants and have already started receiving the first rental payments, Miliutin added.

According to him, the issue of selling the complex is not currently under consideration, and no official offers related to such a sale have been submitted to the banks.

"First it is necessary to stabilize the management of the asset, after which a market analysis will be carried out and a long-term strategy for the asset will be developed... The indicative value and potential sale parameters will be determined during the development of this strategy. At the same time, the banks will aim to maximize the benefits from holding this asset," Miliutin noted.

However, Ukreximbank reported that it still considers it necessary to sell this asset.

"After re-signing all agreements with tenants and service providers for the Gulliver complex, Ukreximbank sees the need to ensure the sale of the asset, since it is a non-core holding for the bank," the bank’s press service stated.

For its part, Try O doubts the ability of the state-owned banks to manage such a commercial real estate asset and is ready to return to negotiations.

"We remain open to constructive dialogue and are once again ready to share with the creditors the results of our audit and financial modeling, so that the complex does not fall victim solely to legal formalities. For us, Gulliver is not just ‘square meters.’ It is a shared story," the company declared.

Ukraine’s long-term investment problems

The Gulliver case can be seen as a landmark example for Ukraine in terms of how external circumstances affect the implementation of projects involving long-term financing.

Oschadbank also acknowledges that the problems in servicing Gulliver’s debts were largely driven by external factors.

"The company began experiencing financial difficulties a long time ago (before Viktor Polishchuk became involved). One of the initial key problems was delays in putting the building into operation, the complex was under construction for nearly eight years. The peak of the problems came in 2014, when the debt, denominated in foreign currency, effectively multiplied several times due to the sharp devaluation. At the same time, rental rates lagged far behind the devaluation. As a result, the first financial model failed," said Oschadbank Deputy Chairman Arsen Miliutin.

Nevertheless, the debt could still have been repaid, as confirmed in 2019–2020 by calculations carried out by Rothschild and KPMG during the financial restructuring.

Try O emphasizes that the company’s ability to meet its obligations to the state-owned banks was objectively impacted by the war.

"The company faced the need to restructure its business models due to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, to finance the rebuilding of a logistics complex destroyed by Russian strikes, and to defend against legally questionable criminal prosecution and the transfer of assets to ARMA," the company stated.

Oschadbank agrees that Gulliver’s owner’s business suffered significant losses specifically because of the war.

"After the war began, with renewed devaluation and a decline in business activity (offices and stores stood empty), it became clear that the 2020 financial model was under threat. The debtor gradually resumed payments, and the banks held very active negotiations with him about prospects for repayment. By spring 2024, forecasts pointed to a full restoration of the financial restructuring model, with only the shortfalls from the first wartime period left to be settled," Oschadbank Deputy Chairman Arsen Miliutin added.

This time, unlike the period before the full-scale war, the state-owned banks decided to forgo debt restructuring. That will also require recognizing losses, since Gulliver’s appraised value is several times lower than the amount of the debt. This could hit Ukreximbank particularly hard; the NBU had previously warned it might need recapitalization from the state even without this.

However, if the decision to change Gulliver’s ownership truly had a political rather than a purely financial context, this will soon become evident.