KIEV, July 4 – Ukraine’s prosecutor’s general office launched criminal investigation into former owners and managers that had driven the country’s largest bank Privatbank into bankruptcy, a senior official said Tuesday.

Oleksandr Shlapak, the government-appointed head of Privatbank since December 2016 when the state has taken it over, said well-connected companies borrowed massively - 198 billion hryvnias - from Privatbank before its collapse.