Ihor Kolomoisky is one of those businessmen who created their empire on the ruins that remained after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The perfect representative of the new oligarch class system, he — often forcefully — privatized numerous previously state-owned companies, buying them for nothing, creating billions, and leaving the companies financially exhausted in the end.
According to numerous people who work with him, his main advantage is his ruthlessness and cruel performance: “He is like a man with Tourette’s. Even if he likes you, he will curse you and your mother throughout the entire conversation. He can kick you out of the room without hesitation. He enjoys showing everyone that all the money and the power haven’t changed or smoothed him,” reports Haaretz.
He started his business path as a worker in trade cooperative Fianit. In 1991, when Ukraine opened its borders to capitalism, he and his partners founded Sentosa Ltd., an import company which sold Russian goods in Dnipropetrovsk. They continued with petroleum and metallurgy products, fuel, and manganese ore. A year later, in 1992, they founded PrivatBank, the first commercial bank in Ukraine. When Ukrainian people started to trade voucher certificates they’d received as shareholders in the former communist regime, the bank invested them in different companies in Ukraine, gradually gaining their power in every area and key industry. Making ties with politics along the way, Kolomoisky’s influence grew and grew to unprecedented levels (via The Page).
