Fighting financial crime while profiting from it — that’s the reality for the family of Ihor Cherkaskyi, who has headed Ukraine’s State Financial Monitoring Service for over 10 years. Every year, his family makes tens of millions of hryvnias through shady schemes, funneled through sole proprietorships and largely ignored by law enforcement. Luxury cars, expensive art collections, and millions in hidden assets — all while officially earning just a modest government salary — should have raised red flags for anti-corruption authorities long ago.
How Ukraine’s Financial Intelligence Head Cherkaskyi Built a Fleet of Cars and Piles of Cash
Let’s start with Cherkaskyi’s official asset declaration. Ironically, the man responsible for monitoring the country’s financial flows has gone out of his way to make monitoring his own assets nearly impossible. Who better than Ukraine’s top financial watchdog to know how to hide money and property?
For example, Cherkaskyi does not disclose how much he paid for a luxury car collection registered under his wife’s name. As of his first asset declaration in 2016, the family owned a Mercedes-Benz R 350 (2005), a Mercedes-Benz S 500 (2006), a Lincoln Navigator (2007), a Maserati Quattroporte (2008), an Infiniti QX 56 (2010), and a Mercedes-Benz G 63 AMG (2012). All these cars were bought brand new and likely cost several hundred thousand dollars in total.
Cherkaskyi also “forgot” to mention how much he paid for 38 valuable paintings. According to his declarations, no prices are listed for these works of art. Not one or two paintings — but thirty-eight. How much cash does his wife Nataliya Cherkaska keep at home? That’s also a mystery, as Cherkaskyi claims that his “family member did not provide the information.” Convenient, isn’t it?
According to his latest declaration for 2023, the Cherkaskyi family owns a 1,356-square-meter land plot and a 544-square-meter house in Kozyn, a wealthy suburb outside Kyiv, along with two apartments and a garage in Kyiv itself. Cherkaskyi also owns a luxury Audemars Piguet watch, but again, no value is mentioned — even though such a watch could be worth anywhere from several thousand dollars to nearly $500,000, depending on the model. The family also reports millions in savings: $480,000 and €148,000 in cash, plus smaller amounts in bank accounts.
How much wealth and property Ihor Cherkaskyi and his associates have accumulated. Infographic by BlackBox OSINT
How Nataliia Cherkaska Makes Millions on Consulting
After reviewing Ihor Cherkaskyi’s asset declarations over the past eight years, it becomes clear that most of the family’s income comes from the business activities of his wife, Nataliia Cherkaska. Cherkaskyi himself has only recently been earning just over 100,000 UAH a month. For example, back in 2015, his salary was just 9,500 UAH per month. Meanwhile, that same year, his wife earned 10,059,969 UAH (about $470,000) from her activities as a private entrepreneur.
At the same time, Cherkaska has also been employed at UNIQA Insurance Company, where her monthly salary has been a modest 8,000–10,000 UAH. However, it’s likely she isn’t there for the paycheck (and it’s unclear whether she is actively working there at all, as we’ll discuss later). Instead, her position might help funnel insurance payouts to herself and her husband. For example, in 2016, UNIQA paid Cherkaskyi a generous 1,806,290 UAH, and another 250,000 UAH to his wife, their own employee. Yet Cherkaskyi’s declaration for that year did not report any insurance premiums.
Nataliia Cherkaska’s official business activity is consulting on commercial and management matters. From 2016 to 2018, her business income consistently hit the 5 million UAH ceiling allowed under Ukraine’s simplified taxation system for private entrepreneurs (Group 3). In 2019, it was 1 million UAH, but then her earnings grew rapidly — from 6.4 million UAH in 2020 to 8.4 million UAH in 2023.
It’s unclear who exactly the wife of the country’s chief financial intelligence officer is advising, or what services she provides to earn such large sums. There is no mention of her business online — no website, no ads, no public activity. This alone raises questions about her so-called success. Especially considering that, according to our sources, since early 2022, Nataliia Cherkaska has spent most weekdays at home in the village of Kozyn, with no fixed office location. She mainly interacts with household staff and regularly visits beauty salons like Le Blanc and Kika-style. In short, her lifestyle suggests she has no real business activity, making her $200,000+ annual income look highly suspicious.
How Cherkaskyi’s Family Launders Money Through Private Entrepreneurs
A similar story applies to the children of Ukraine’s chief financial intelligence officer. Mariia and Hryhorii Cherkaskyi both registered as private entrepreneurs (FOP, Group 3) in 2015 and 2016, respectively, listing the same address as their mother. Their main line of business is listed as insurance agent and brokerage services. What’s notable is that almost immediately after registering, both began earning millions of hryvnias each year.
Between 2015 and 2023, Mariia Cherkaska’s FOP processed 47.1 million UAH (around $1.78 million), while Hryhorii Cherkaskyi’s FOP brought in 35.5 million UAH (about $1.25 million) over the past eight years.
Yet, like their mother, neither Mariia nor Hryhorii appear online as businesspeople or insurance professionals — there are no mentions of them as agents or brokers. The only media reference to Hryhorii Cherkaskyi is as the boyfriend of singer Dasha Astafieva. According to the GetContact app, this is also how he is saved in the contact lists of several users — not as a broker.
All of this further suggests their businesses are likely fake, serving as a way to launder illicit funds. Over nine years, their combined revenues have exceeded $3 million.
It appears that as the inflow of “off-the-books” money grew, laundering it through the FOPs of Cherkaskyi’s wife and children was no longer enough. This likely explains why Ihor Cherkaskyi’s father, Borys Cherkaskyi, also registered as a private entrepreneur, engaging in the same type of consulting as his daughter-in-law.
Interestingly, all the Cherkaskyi family’s FOPs are linked to the same phone number: +380674****3. This number belongs to Oksana Krasiuk, who is connected to UNIQA Insurance Company. Two other FOPs — registered to Khrystyna Solomikina and Kostiantyn Kabanets — also use this number, suggesting they may also be part of Ihor Cherkaskyi’s money-laundering scheme.
UNIQA Insurance was formerly known as Credo-Classic. From 1997 to 2000, Ihor Cherkaskyi served as its vice president, later becoming chair of the board from 2001 to 2002. It is likely that Cherkaskyi established this family-based laundering scheme as far back as 2002, when his wife and father registered their FOPs, while he was leading Credo-Classic. Oksana Krasiuk, a trusted employee of the insurance company, appears to have been involved from the start.
Since Cherkaskyi returned to lead the State Financial Monitoring Service in 2015, his family’s FOPs have processed between 15 and 20 million UAH annually under the guise of “consulting” — showing all the hallmarks of fictitious business operations used to launder illegal income. In 2015 alone, Nataliia and Mariia Cherkaska funneled $1.15 million through their private businesses.
Tax Fraud Schemes and Money of Yanukovych: What Cherkaskyi Helps to Hide
It’s clear that anti-corruption agencies like NABU and the State Bureau of Investigation need to look into how the family of Ukraine’s top financial watchdog is making its money. For years, the Cherkaskyi family likely signed fake contracts with shell companies and individuals, supposedly providing consulting services. In reality, this was a way to launder large sums of cash.
But where did the money come from? In Ukraine, it’s no secret that many corrupt officials profit from the very areas they are supposed to regulate. Police take bribes to ignore crimes, judges sell rulings, doctors sell medical documents, local deputies trade land permits, and bureaucrats profit from kickbacks on government tenders.
The Financial Monitoring Service is meant to spot suspicious transactions and help fight money laundering, terrorism financing, and the illegal arms trade. Yet, for a price, it seems easy to ignore shady deals and help hide dirty money. International experts at MONEYVAL have repeatedly criticized the agency under Cherkaskyi for doing a poor job.
“Ukraine often fails to use financial crime information collected by its own agencies, including the financial intelligence unit. This information rarely leads to criminal cases or asset seizures. As a result, convictions for money laundering in Ukraine are extremely rare,” says a MONEYVAL report.
One example is the embezzlement of $1.5 billion linked to Viktor Yanukovych’s circle. In 2015, Ukraine’s FIU froze the money in state-owned banks. Later, these funds were confiscated in a court case against Arkadii Kashkin, a close ally of oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko. Much of the money was held in government bonds under a company called Wonderbliss Ltd.
In 2017, NABU opened a case against Cherkaskyi, suspecting him of helping embezzle those funds. But the case quickly stalled, and no one knows where the money went.
The damage didn’t stop there. In 2019, Ukraine lost another 79 billion UAH due to the FIU’s failure to shut down VAT fraud schemes run by criminal groups. According to an official investigation, Cherkaskyi and other officials simply turned a blind eye, allowing these fraudsters to steal huge amounts from the state budget. The criminal case, opened in May 2020, is registered as No. 42020000000000953.
According to available data, around 550 shell and conversion centers were involved in this scheme across Ukraine. These centers helped real sector businesses siphon off public funds through illegal VAT refunds. Media reports also suggested that, along with Cherkaskyi, Ukraine’s then-head of the State Tax Service, Vice Prime Minister Oleksii Liubchenko, might have been involved in the scheme.
Liubchenko is believed to have created the VAT fraud mechanism back when Mykola Azarov was Prime Minister. At the time, tens of billions were funneled into the shadow economy through fictitious VAT credits and offset schemes, which the financial monitoring service conveniently ignored. When Cherkaskyi returned to lead the Financial Monitoring Service in 2014, media reports claim he set an unofficial “fee” of 1% for those whose transactions would be “overlooked” — from cash-out operations to VAT fraud and shady banking or foreign trade deals.
By 2020, Liubchenko and Cherkaskyi allegedly teamed up to run VAT fraud schemes together. It’s no coincidence that this is when the income of Cherkaskyi’s wife’s sole proprietorship started growing significantly.
The Hidden Chapter in Ihor Cherkaskyi’s Life
Ihor Cherkaskyi has served as the head of Ukraine’s Financial Intelligence Unit (SFMS) for nearly a decade. He also held this position from 2008 to 2010. To keep such a post for so long, despite ongoing criminal investigations and questions about his family’s unexplained wealth, Cherkaskyi clearly has powerful connections at the highest levels of government. His biography offers clues about who might have helped him secure and maintain his role.
Cherkaskyi’s background raises even more questions. Not only does he leave out key details in his asset declarations, but also in his biography. According to the official SFMS website, his career began in 1997 when, at just 27, he became vice president of the insurance company Credo-Classic (which later became UNIQA). There is no mention of what he did before that or where he studied.
Cherkaskyi simply claims to have degrees in economics and law but provides no details on which universities he attended. This mystery is reminiscent of other cases in Ukraine where public figures falsely claimed professional credentials. The only available record shows that in 2012, Cherkaskyi obtained a PhD in Economics from Kyiv National Economic University. However, older reports suggest that back in 1990, he was actually enrolled in a military academy, not a university related to economics or law.
At that time, Cherkaskyi’s father, Borys Cherkaskyi, worked a modest job as a handyman at the Institute of Materials Science until 1991. Yet, starting in 1990, the family suddenly began buying expensive cars. Their purchases included a VAZ 2106, two additional VAZ models, followed by a Peugeot and a Mercedes-Benz 500 in 1992. By 1995, they added a Mercedes-Benz 420, and by 1997, Ihor owned a Ford Expedition, another Mercedes, and a Lincoln.
In the 1990s, when most Ukrainians barely made ends meet, this collection of new luxury cars — each worth tens of thousands of dollars — was highly unusual. Where did the money come from?
According to investigative reports, Ihor and Borys Cherkaskyi were linked to the Avdyshev organized crime group in the 1990s and were allegedly involved in arms trafficking. Their alleged partners included figures who later became part of the leadership of Ukraine’s military intelligence under Ihor Smeshko and Oleksandr Halaka. Additionally, Borys Cherkaskyi is believed to have been involved in arms deals with Serhiy Bondarchuk, the former director of the state arms trading company Ukrspecexport.
Records show that in 2002, Borys Cherkaskyi and Serhiy Bondarchuk co-founded the private housing cooperative “Zoloti Vorota” in Kozyn.
It’s likely that Ihor Cherkaskyi’s experience in the arms trade helped him land his early executive role at Credo-Classic Insurance. This company was linked to another insurer called “Ukraina,” which was officially created to provide services for law enforcement and military personnel. The founders included Credo-Classic, Bank Ukraina, a Kyiv-based law firm, and a fund associated with Ukraine’s law enforcement and military structures.
Interestingly, this fund’s board included former Interior Minister Andriy Vasilyshyn, and its founders bizarrely included a kindergarten from Chernivtsi Oblast and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Investigative reports suggest that this insurance company may have laundered money from illegal arms deals under the cover of providing insurance for police, SBU officers, and military personnel.
How Cherkaskyi Got His Position in Power Thanks to Medvedchuk and Turchynov
Another fact missing from Cherkaskyi’s official biography: in 1999, he co-founded PJSC “MK Invest.” Among the other founders were Ivan Fursin, Serhiy Svyatko, Vyacheslav Avramenko, and Rostyslav Shiller — all reportedly close to Serhiy Lyovochkin, Yanukovych’s former chief of staff. Fursin is known for partnering with oligarch Dmytro Firtash in RosUkrEnergo, while Shiller was involved in stealing funds from Oschadbank.
It’s unclear how Cherkaskyi ended up working with Viktor Medvedchuk, head of Kuchma’s Administration, but thanks to Medvedchuk, in 2002 Cherkaskyi became head of a new department overseeing Ukraine’s military and technical cooperation with other countries.
This connected Cherkaskyi to Medvedchuk’s business network. In 2004, Cherkaskyi’s father, Borys, co-founded Pharmed LLC with Volodymyr Pachkiv, brother of Medvedchuk’s chief of staff. The company later shut down and was flagged for links to Russian owners.
Soon after, Cherkaskyi entered politics. He became a Kyiv City Council deputy and then an MP with the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. In 2008, he was appointed head of Ukraine’s Financial Monitoring Committee and became close to Oleksandr Turchynov, then deputy prime minister. Turchynov reportedly helped him secure the top position at Ukraine’s Financial Intelligence Unit.
Cherkaskyi was accused of covering up Turchynov’s schemes to steal state funds through shell companies, which the FIU ignored. These companies were quickly closed and replaced by new ones, while violations were only flagged after they had shut down. In 2009, Cherkaskyi was also linked to a scheme that stole over 220 million UAH from Rodovid Bank and over 315 million UAH from National Bank refinancing.
In 2010, Cherkaskyi lost his position after a change in government. For the next four years, he headed a legal-focused NGO. But in 2014, when Turchynov became acting president, Cherkaskyi returned as head of financial intelligence.
Cherkaskyi has worked under every government — from Kuchma and Medvedchuk to Tymoshenko, Turchynov, and now Zelenskyy. In 2019, President Zelenskyy appointed him to the National Security and Defense Council, and in 2020, to the National Anti-Corruption Policy Council.