Natalie Ann Jaresko[a] (born April 24,1965,also known as Natalia Ivanivna Yaresko)[b] is an American-born former U.S. State Department official and Ukrainian investment banker who served as Ukraine's Minister of Finance from December 2014 until April 2016.[1] On 20 March 2017,she was appointed as executive director of the Financial Oversight &Management Board for Puerto Rico. Jaresko announced her resignation from the PROMESA board effective April 1,2022.[2] Since April 2022,she has been working as chairman of the Aspen Institute Kyiv and advisor for the non-profit Stronger Than Ever.[3][4]
Jaresko was raised with two siblings,Katherine and John,[6] in Wood Dale,Illinois.[7] Although her family spoke mainly English,she attended Ukrainian school on Saturdays and the Ukrainian Orthodox church on Sundays.[8] She is bilingual in English and Ukrainian. Residing in Ukrainian Village,Chicago,[10] she studied accounting at DePaul University,earning a B.Sc. degree in 1987.[11] She received a master's degree in public policy from Harvard Kennedy School in 1989.[7]
In 2011,she and her husband,Ihor Figlus,divorced. She has two daughters who live in Ukraine.[7][8]
Citizenship
Jaresko lived in Ukraine from 1992 to 2000,and returned in 2004.[12][13] She received Ukrainian citizenship on 2 December 2014,the day of her appointment as Minister of Finance of Ukraine.[14][15] She remains a U.S. citizen.[16] Although the U.S. does not prohibit dual citizenship,Ukrainian law states that she would have to renounce her non-Ukrainian citizenship(s) within two years.[17]
Jaresko also held several key positions in the private business sector. In February 2001,she became president and chief executive officer of Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF),which had been disbursing United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funds to small and medium-sized businesses in Ukraine and Moldova since 1995.[21][22]
In 2006,she co-founded Horizon Capital,where she served as a managing partner and chief executive officer,which took over the management of WNISEF.[21] In those positions she established and strengthened economic ties with Ukraine and Moldova.[19][20] Horizon Capital managed two funds,the Emerging Europe Growth Fund aimed at institutional and individual investors in the west,and the USAID funded Western NIS Enterprise Fund which preceded Horizon Capital.[22] When Jaresko left Horizon Capital in December 2014,it had about $600 million of Ukrainian investments under management.[7]
Between 2005 and 2010 Jaresko was a member of President Viktor Yushchenko's Foreign Investors Advisory Council and the advisory board of the Ukrainian Center for Promotion of Foreign Investment under the auspices of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.[19][20]
Commenting on the fiscal effects of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine,she characterized the economic ramifications as an "economic strangulation of the country".[23] She said that any company that continued to do business with Russia was "indirectly financing the war".[23]
Ukrainian Minister of Finance
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2016)
Nine months after the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Jaresko was approached by headhunters for the new Ukrainian government, and within days offered the post of minister of finance.[24]
Early in Jaresko's term she made an outline agreement for a $40 billion four-year loan from the International Monetary Fund and Western countries.[21][25]
In August 2015 Jaresko was instrumental to restructuring Ukraine's debts, including a partial write-off with a 20% haircut on Ukraine's $18 billion privately held government debt.[26]
On 24 March 2016, shortly before she left office, she argued that the economy had to be depoliticized, and Ukraine needed a technocratic government[27] and that she was willing to lead such a technocratic government.[28]
Jaresko was rejected as a prime ministerial candidate by the governing coalition.[33] When speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, Volodymyr Groysman, was elected as Ukraine's new prime minister on 14 April 2016, he did not retain Jaresko in his new Cabinet.[33]
After she left office, Jaresko said she believed the Ukraine macroeconomic situation had stabilized,[34] and that Ukraine needed a further $25 billion of investment beyond the agreed IMF loans to "win over the hearts and minds of Ukrainian society" as the "immediate effects [of reform] on the population have been painful."[35]
Later career
In May 2016, Jaresko became chair of the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute unit in Kyiv, a U.S. headquartered educational and policy studies NGO.[36][37]
On 20 March 2017, Jaresko became the executive director of the Financial Oversight Board of Puerto Rico,[38] as part of the PROMESA bill.[39] Her chairmanship was accompanied by multiple protests against the FOMBPR in Puerto Rico, the largest being a protest of 100,000 people in San Juan in the summer of 2019, before announcing her resignation in February 2022 effective on 1 April 2022.[40][2]
In April 2022, Jaresko became an advisor for Stronger Than Ever, a registered non-profit organization aiming to collect $5 million in support of the people of Ukraine. The non-profit was founded by Red Ventures CEO Ric Elias.
Jaresco was put on the Russian state list of "500 americans" that was banned from entering the country following US sanctions related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Jaresco was ranked at 500 on the list.[41]
↑ "Яресько Наталія Іванівна"[Nataliya Ivanivna Yaresko: Biography] (in Ukrainian). lustration.co.ua. Archived from the original on 9 December 2014. Retrieved 31 December 2014.
1 2 "Ukraine elects new Prime Minister". Daily Telegraph. Associated Press. 14 April 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2016. The Supreme Rada on Thursday voted 257-50 in favor of Volodymyr Groysman, a compromise choice nominated by President Petro Poroshenko after his apparent first choice, U.S.-born Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, was rejected by the governing coalition.
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