Ihor Valeriyovych Kolomoyskyi (; ; born 13 February 1963) is a Ukrainian-born Israeli-Cypriot billionaire businessman, once considered the leading oligarch in Ukraine. Already an entrepreneur in the last years of Soviet Ukraine, in 2010 Kolomoyskyi was rated as the second richest person in Ukraine, and as one of the country’s most influential oligarchs. In 1992, he had co-founded PrivatBank and its informal extension of companies, Privat Group, and he subsequently acquired extensive media holdings. Between 2014 and 2016, Kolomoyskyi served as Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast until his dismissal by President Petro Poroshenko. That year, his undercapitalised bank was declared a threat to Ukraine’s financial security and taken into state ownership. In 2019, Kolomoyskyi's media power and funding supported Volodymyr Zelenskyy's successful presidential campaign to unseat Poroshenko. In 2020, he was indicted in the United States, on charges related to large-scale bank fraud. In 2021, the US banned Kolomoyskyi and his family from entering the country, accusing him of corruption and being a threat to the Ukrainian public's faith in democratic institutions. In July 2022, following an apparent falling out, Zelenskyy stripped Kolomoyskyi of his Ukrainian citizenship, citing the ongoing US criminal investigation. In November 2022, many of Kolomoyski's assets, particularly ones that were strategic to the Ukrainian state in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including his ownership of Ukraine's largest gasoline companies, were nationalized by the Ukrainian government. Early life and education Kolomoyskyi was born into a Jewish family in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Both parents had graduated in engineering. His mother worked at the university and father in a metallurgical plant. Already in his childhood he was considered to be very determined, diligent and serious, was enthusiastic about sports, and liked to play chess. Professionally, he followed the example of his parents. After graduating from the Gymnasium 21 in Dnipro with the Komsomol badge "For outstanding school performance", in 1980 he took up graduate studies in engineering at the Leonid Brezhnev Dnipropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute (now the National Metallurgical Academy of Ukraine), graduating in 1985. As a Komsomol activist, Kolomoyskyi was involved in the so-called "disco movement"—an attempt by the authorities to promote an ideological safe alternative to the growing, underground, rebroadcast and performance of "Anglo-American" rock music including, in the 80s, heavy metal and punk. Kolomoyskyi used his role in organising approved dance venues and concerts to begin his trading career, as did others in his