Vadym Petrovych Hetman (; 12 July 1935 – 22 April 1998) was a Ukrainian statesman, politician, and banker. He is credited with the creation of the National Bank of Ukraine, Ukraine's central bank. He was assassinated in April 1998 in his home in Kyiv. According to the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, the crime was paid for by former Prime Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Lazarenko. He was posthumously conferred the title of Hero of Ukraine on 11 July 2005. Early life and career Vadym Petrovych Hetman was born in the village of Snityn, located in Poltava Oblast (at the time in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic), in 1935. In 1956, he finished the Kyiv Financial-Economic Institute, after which he worked in various financial institutions in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. In 1975, Vadym Hetman was named the first vice-president to the Head of the Government Committee of Pricing of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1987, he became the head of the Agricultural-Industrial Bank of the Ukrainian SSR (since 1990 Ukraine Bank). Chairman of the National Bank On 24 March 1992, Vadym Hetman was accepted as the Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine. He supervised early monetary reforms in newly independent Ukraine through 1993, when he resigned from his position as the head of the supervisory board of the National Bank of Ukraine. However, he maintained close ties with his successor, Viktor Yushchenko. Hetman's signature appears on the original banknotes of Ukraine's national currency, the hryvnia, which was introduced in September 1996. People's Deputy of Ukraine Hetman was also a member of the Verkhovna Rada from 1990 to 1998. He went for his second term as deputy in 1994 from the Talne electoral district of Cherkasy Oblast as a nonpartisan. He received 50.97% of the vote in the first round of voting. He ran for a third term in the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election, but failed to get re-elected, receiving only 21.85% of the vote, 3.87% below the required percentage to win. His opponent was First Deputy Minister of Information Mykhailo Onofryichuk. He is also known to have complained to the then-President Leonid Kuchma about voting irregularities within the Verkhovna Rada itself. Assassination Hetman was shot by an apparently professional killer in the elevator of his own apartment block in Kyiv on 22 April 1998. The alleged assassin, 29-year-old Serhiy Kulev, a member of the "Kushner gang" from the Donbas, was only arrested in 2002.