Valeriya Hontaryeva

Valeriya Gontareva or Valeriya Oleksiyivna Hontaryeva (Ukrainian: Вале́рія Олексі́ївна Го́нтарева) (born 20 October 1964 in Dnipropetrovsk) is Governor or Chairwoman of the National Bank of Ukraine. She submitted her resignation on 10 April 2017 and left the bank on 11 May 2017.

Gontareva was born on 20 October 1964 in Dnipropetrovsk. She graduated in 1987 from Kiev Polytechnic Institute and in 1997 from Kiev National Economic University with a master's degree in Economics.

After obtaining her degree in 1987, she was a junior researcher at the Ukrainian Centre for Standardization and Metrology for two years, and from 1989 to 1993, Gontaryeva worked as a design engineer in the institute "Hiprostrommashyna". In 1993 Gontaryeva started her career in the financial sector and she held top positions in the Kiev branches of ING Bank and Societe Generale.

In 1996 she became director of resource management at Societe Generale in Ukraine and in 2001 deputy chairman of ING Bank (in 2007 for six months first deputy). From 2007 to 2014, she served as Chairwoman of then Investment Capital Ukraine (now ICU), Kiev based financial group.

She officially sold her stakes in the company before becoming governor of the NBU. However, there were controversial discussions about the independence of her policy due to her close relation with the president Poroshenko as he hired for the sale of his Roshen holding her former company ICU beside Rothschild Group.

In her official public income declaration for 2013, Gontareva stated an income of 3.884.679 UAH, a car park with an Infinity FX35, a Porsche Cayenne, a Porsche Panamera, a Toyota Landcruiser and several real estates. According to Gontareva's e-declaration for 2016, her total income amounted to UAH 57 mln (the most of which was due to the third tranche of selling her shares in ICU Holdings Limited - UAH 52,57 mln).

Chair of the National Bank of Ukraine

On 19 June 2014 Gontareva replaced Stepan Kubiv as Chairwoman of the National Bank of Ukraine. Gontaryeva is the first female to lead the bank.

For the time of Gontareva’s work in the NBU, hryvnia depreciated almost three times.

International financial institutions representatives state that the biggest reform achievement in Ukraine under Gontareva’s rule has been the clean-up of the banking system with the grand finale of the nationalisation of Privatbank.

Gontareva had reduced the size of the central bank bureaucracy from 12,000 to 5,000. She has let the country’s currency, the hryvnia, float, which stabilized the economy. And, above all, in an effort to clean up the ailing banking sector, she has named 87 banks insolvent with about 60 percent of the sector’s assets. According to the EBRD managing director (Eastern Europe and the Caucasus) Francis Malige, Gontareva is No. 1 changemaker in Ukraine.

The National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has opened criminal proceedings in a case, which according to them involved Gontareva’s Deputy Kateryna Rozhkova, regarding the 'Platinum Bank's' withdrawal from the market. Gontareva was accused of deliberately bringing the bank to bankruptcy, and of speculation on the growth of the dollar exchange rate. The rallies from the allegedly deceived depositors of the failed banks repeatedly gathered outside the National Bank of Ukraine. Gontareva has a good reputation among professionals as the Ukrainian central bank for the first time started to act independently from the interests of oligarchs and politicians. She fulfilled modern monetary policy similar to the policy of the European Central Bank or the United States’ Federal Reserve System. On the contrary, the predecessors of Gontareva on the first hand wanted to maintain the stable national currency exchange rate.

On 10 April 2017, Gontareva submitted her resignation. On 11 May 2017, while still not formally dismissed, she left the bank and Deputy Governor Yakiv Smoliy took over her duties.

“My mission is complete. First, the country has moved to a flexible exchange rate and implemented the new monetary policy of inflation targeting. Secondly, the banking system has been cleansed of insolvent banks, and its future resilience strengthened. Thirdly, the National Bank has been completely transformed, all the processes have been reset and today our central bank is a strong modern organisation,” Valeria Gontareva concluded during her resignation announcement.

During her nearly three years in office, the National Bank headed by Valeria Gontareva has succeeded in stabilising the macroeconomic situation, fundamentally transforming the banking sector landscape and building a modern central bank despite war and political instability, deep economic crisis and empty government treasury.

On 1 October 2018 Gontarevabecame a member of the Institute of Global Affairs, an initiative of the London School of Economics.

28.03.2019 "In particular, Gontareva, together with ICU top manager Konstantin Stetsenko, is charged with 'assisting in a criminal organization and assisting in the illegal seizure of another's property – monetary funds of PJSC Agrarian Fund worth UAH 2.069 billion through the conclusion by JSC Brokbusinessbank of fake contracts of sale and purchase of government domestic loan bonds with the Agrarian Fund under direct repurchase agreements with the National Bank of Ukraine," Forum Daily reported.

Gontareva is married and has two sons; Anton born in 1988 and Nikita born in 2000. 2018 she moved to London.