Hennadii Korban

His elder sister Victoria Korban (b. 1962) moved to Israel in 1990 with her family.

Korban's parents also have Israeli citizenship.

Hennadii Olehovych Korban (Геннадій Олегович Корбан; born May 24, 1970) is a former Ukrainian businessman and politician.

Born to a Jewish family of Soviet engineers.

He grew up in Dnipropetrovsk, where he graduated from secondary school No. 21 in 1987.

After graduating from school, he entered the Faculty of Philosophy at Rostov State University, but was not enrolled because he could not provide a recommendation from the local party body of the Communist Party of Ukraine.

The same year he returned to Dnipropetrovsk and entered the Metallurgical Institute.

Soon he suspended his studies and was drafted into the Soviet Army.

In 1988–1990 he served in the army, with the rank of ryadovoy in the Aviation Guards Regiment.

After demobilization in 1991, he entered the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, but soon he skipped studying at the institute in favor of a job as a broker.

In 1991, he began working as a broker at the Center Soyuz Commodity Exchange and the Russian Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange.

On January 26, the main advertising screen at the Passage shopping center broadcast the Swan Lake ballet (a reference to the coup attempt in the USSR in August 1991, when this ballet was broadcast on all TV channels), one of the side ones - the flags of Ukraine and the EU.

It was on this day in Dnipropetrovsk that about 3,000 participants in the Revolution of Dignity gathered at the Regional State Administration.

They were brutally dispersed by the police and paramilitary “titushky” groups.

In 1992, he returned to his native city with start-up capital and founded a brokerage office “Ukraine”.

In 1994, he started his investment company OJSC IC Slavutych Capital and headed its Board of Directors.

In 1997, he graduated from the State Mining Academy of Ukraine with a degree in finance and credit.

In 2001, he headed the Supervisory Board of Yuzhniy Mining and Processing Plant.

In 2005, he became a member of the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian oil and gas company Ukrnafta, the largest producer of oil and gas in the country.

In business, Korban focused on primary privatization, securities trading, and the construction of large office and shopping centers in Kyiv and the Dnipro.

He invested heavily in a number of blue chip stocks in Ukraine and abroad.

Chief of Staff of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration from March 6, 2014 to March 24, 2015.

In early February 2014, Korban explained his motivation to openly oppose the Yanukovych regime: “We decided that we had to do something as citizens, to send a signal that not all businessmen are afraid… We want to live in Europe, not in an outpost of the Russian empire.”

On Saturday, January 25, at about 5 p.m., the lights were turned off in the Passage, Europe and Library malls, escalators and elevators stopped; thousands of visitors were forced to leave the buildings in the dark.

In independent media, the incident was characterized as “sabotage” and “revenge”, organized by Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Vilkul.

The municipal services of the city did not respond to messages about the blackout.

Head of the political council of the Ukrainian Association of Patriots - UKROP from July 12, 2015 to January 23, 2016.

On November 21, 2015, two years after the beginning of the Euromaidan, Korban recalled:

"“...Filatov and I woke up the city of Dnipropetrovsk by broadcasting 5 Kanal (Petro Poroshenko's terrestrial television channel, which was the only one in Ukraine to broadcast live protests) on the advertising screens of our shopping malls as a symbol of truth and objectivity in the epicenter of the political influence of the Party of Regions”."

So Korban and Filatov mobilized pro-Ukrainian sentiments in Dnipropetrovsk.

In addition to 5 Kanal, with the help of these advertising screens, residents of the city could watch live broadcasts from protests in Kyiv and other cities by Espreso TV satellite channel, which at that time did not have a license to broadcast in Ukraine.

Also, businessmen hung the flags of Ukraine and the EU on the buildings of their hotels and business centers in Dnipropetrovsk.

According to Korban, the broadcast of 5 Kanal on the advertising screen of the “Passage” mall in the center of Dnipropetrovsk was organized during the events on Hrushevsky Street.

According to some evidence, the broadcast of 5 Kanal on the “Passage” advertising screen began on January 24.

It was on this day that the city council met in an extraordinary session to vote for an appeal to Yanukovych to use all legal methods to resolve the situation (a veiled call to disperse the Euromaidan).

This appeal was initiated by the Party of Regions.

Since March 5, 2020 he is the head of the Community Board, a consultative body to the City Council of Dnipro.

After the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 28, 2022, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Dnipro Defense Council.

During the Revolution of Dignity, he organizationally and financially supported the protests in Dnipropetrovsk, provided the protesters with legal and informational assistance.

For this activity, together with his business partner Borys Filatov, he was persecuted by Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Vilkul, who influenced the regional authorities.