Scandalous Ukrainian banker Denys Horbunenko, linked to fugitive oligarch Firtash, is trying to clean up his ties to Russia
The controversial banker Denys Horbunenko, who has been in the spotlight for his ties to oligarch Dmytro Firtash, has taken active steps to remove references to his ties to Russia from the web.
We, in turn, publish material that is so disturbing to the banker and exposes his connections with the aggressor country.
Denys Horbunenko, a former banker from Ukraine who lives in London, is at the centre of a scandal over his connection to Dzing, a fintech company with Russian roots. The company was recently subject to restrictions by the British authorities over suspected fraud. The connecting link was a UAE company accused of supplying titanium raw materials to Russia. Details of this case are presented in the article.
The international scandal involving the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) imposing sanctions on fintech company Dzing continues to develop. A new name has been added to the list of people potentially linked to the company, which may have a significant impact on the investigation by the British authorities. It is Denys Horbunenko, who used to run the scandalous Rodovid Bank in Ukraine. He moved to London after the bank’s financial collapse in 2009.
In the UK, Horbunenko acted as a representative of Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash (arrested in 2014 in Austria at the request of the FBI for bribing for licences to mine ilmenite ore in India; the US authorities have since sought his extradition). Firtash has been under sanctions in Ukraine since 2021.
Earlier it was reported that the company Raga Establishment Limited was registered in the name of Horbunenko, which won a court case in favour of Firtash in 2019 against Ukraine’s richest businessman Rinat Akhmetov over the sale of Ukrtelecom for $700 million. Horbunenko also attended the trial of Firtash in Vienna.
In addition, according to Ukrainian media reports, Horbunenko organised a conspiracy to sell the rights to claim the property of Kyiv’s largest shopping centre, Respublika, in 2019, which resulted in the asset being purchased at a 70% discount by Soltex Capital.
This latter company was registered to a British investment banker, Robert Alan Johnson. His connection to Horbunenko is confirmed by the fact that Johnson was the chairman of the supervisory board of the scandalous Ukrainian bank Sich when the National Bank of Ukraine recognised Horbunenko as the de facto controller.
When Soltex Capital was blacklisted by the by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, which proved the existence of a conspiracy, Robert Alan Johnson left the company and it ceased operations.
According to Bloomberg, back in October 2023, the FCA imposed restrictions on the activities of Dzing Finance Ltd., a UK-registered financial technology company, claiming that almost one in five payments received by the company was related to fraudulent schemes. Dzing then agreed not to take on new retail clients or funds without prior regulatory approval.
In March 2024, a number of additional restrictions were imposed on Dzing Finance Ltd. including the obligation to disclose all customer data and the value of any refunds and to report to the FCA twice a month.
According to Bloomberg, Dzing’s key shareholder is Tatyana Orlova, a Russian woman with a Norwegian passport and the ex-wife of Russian billionaire Vitaliy Orlov. The founder and director of Dzing was also a Russian Mikhail Nadel. In 2011, he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 16 years in prison by a Kyrgyz court for fraud and money laundering at Asia Universal Bank.
After settling in London and setting up Dzing, Nadel operated under the name Michael Strogonov, but it was soon declassified.
The London-based anti-corruption organisation Global Witness alleged that Nadel-Strogonov was involved in widespread irregularities, while the International Monetary Fund pointed to ‘large-scale criminal activity’ at the company. As a result, in November 2023, Nadel-Strogonov was forced to resign as a director.
According to the same Bloomberg, in 2021, Dzing Finance Ltd. received a €5.3 million loan from an entity linked to Oleh Boyko, the founder of Finstar Financial Group, who is on the sanctions list of Ukraine and Australia.
In addition to Nadel-Strogonov and Orlova, there is also a third party in Dzing Finance Ltd. Dekiba Trading FZE from the UAE owns 2.137% of the company (the remaining 97.863% is held by Orlova and Nadel’s Dzing Finance Group Limited).
Trader from UAE
On August 1, 2024, the London company Union Gf UK Ltd, owned by Denys Horbunenko, presented a standard report – Confirmation Statement. It became known from it that the composition of the company’s founders had changed: Horbunenko’s share was reduced to 90%, and 10% was transferred to Dekiba Trading FZE – the same one that is a co-owner of Dzing Finance Ltd.
Another confirmation of the close connection between Dekiba Trading FZE and Horbunenko is the resolution of Dzing Finance Ltd. from March 2022, where Ukrainian Yevhen Shapka signed on behalf of Dekiba Trading FZE. Since 2019, he has been the director of the Kyiv company Norlendinvest, the owner of which, according to documents, is the above-mentioned Robert Alan Johnson, who is associated with Horbunenko.
Dekiba Trading FZE is an active trader with a clear focus on the future – so much so that even the materials on its website, hosted in Ukraine , are dated 2025.
There is no publicly available data confirming the global nature of Dekiba Trading FZE’s operations. According to Trademo, in 2021 the company supplied at least two batches of ilmenite concentrate from Africa to the Russian company LLC Kot for $1.4 million.
The country of origin of the cargo was indicated as Mozambique (remarkably, at one time the owner of the Kremlin-financed PMC Wagner, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, included this country in his sphere of interests). Presumably, the cargo could have been destined either for the Crimean Titan plant in occupied Crimea, or for the VSMPO-Avisma company, controlled by the state corporation Rostec, the largest titanium producer in Russia.
The latter is on the US sanctions list. The titanium it produces is widely used in the production of cruise missiles, in particular, the X-101. It was precisely this missile that Russian terrorists launched at the Okhmatdit Children’s Hospital.
We undertake to continue the investigation into the scandalous banker’s connections with the terrorist country, which could lead to additional revelations and a new round of scandal.
To be continued.
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