Austrian courts have rejected the request of the Ukrainian authorities to extradite the former chairman of the board of the National Bank (NBU) Kyrylo Shevchenko.
This was reported by the Austrian publication Der Standard.
Shevchenko is asking for political asylum, claiming political persecution by the Office of the President.
In a comment to the publication, the former chairman of the NBU called the NABU case opened against him "a classic political persecution." He cited his intransigence as head of the National Bank and his refusal to issue the hryvnia and lower the discount rate in the first year of the war as the reason for the case against him.
NABU refused to comment to the Austrian publication.
- On October 4, 2022, Kyrylo Shevchenko resigned from the position of head of the NBU "for reasons related to health." The President approved this decision. Already on October 6, NABU informed Shevchenko of suspicion. The case concerns the period when he was the chairman of the board of Ukrgasbank. We are talking about the withdrawal scheme of 206 million hryvnias during 2014-2019. On the same day, the Verkhovna Rada dismissed Shevchenko from the position of head of the National Bank.
- On October 24 of that year, Shevchenko was declared wanted, and on December 8 he was arrested in absentia. According to journalists, Shevchenko was in Vienna.