Valeriya Melnichuk is a former BBC Monitoring journalist who has worked in the public relations department at the Ukrainian finance ministry during the intense period of the nationalization of PrivatBank and liquidation of numerous other smaller lenders which had been fraudulent or corrupt.

Her boss at the time was finance minister Oleksandr Danylyuk, who Reportercast host Matei Rosca interviewed for S&P Global Market Intelligence to discuss PrivatBank’s nationalization and the Ukrainian economy in general.

Among other things, Melnichuk is responsible for creating this cartoon, explaining to Ukrainians how the largest bank nationalization in their history worked.

The podcast features Ukraine’s campaign to have Russia backlisted by FATF, the international anti-financial crime organisation in Paris — which has so far refused to go down this route. Melnichuk also discusses the influence of the Wagner group on Kremlin policy, the ways that businesses in Russia support the invasion, and Wagner’s criminal activities in Africa.

You may listen directly from Acast and Youtube embedded below, as well as use the RSS feed code to add the stream to your preferred podcast app.

Reportercast can be found on most major platforms: Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Youtube.

CORRECTION: the article was updated to clarify that Melnichuk was part of the BBC Monitoring department rather than the World Service, as previously stated. Apologies.