Kinstellar

Partner

Daniel Bilak is a Canadian-qualified lawyer with over 30 years of professional public and private sector experience in Ukraine and CEE. He is a firm partner and Chairman of the Management Committee of Kinstellar’s Ukraine office.

Prior to joining Kinstellar, Daniel served as Chief Investment Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine (2016-2019) and headed UkraineInvest, the Ukrainian government’s foreign investment promotion agency. During his tenure, UkraineInvest attracted over $1 billion from new investors and Daniel’s advocacy in government on behalf of existing investors helped unblock over $3 billion of investment already in the country.

Daniel has a unique understanding of Ukraine’s machinery of government and the operations of state-owned enterprises – he served as Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Ukrainian State Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia), and briefly as a Board Member of Ukraine’s State Savings Bank (Oshchadbank), with responsibility for corporate governance reform and anti-corruption measures. He has also served twice as Chief of Staff to the Minister of Justice of Ukraine – overseeing the restructuring of the ministry and advising on judicial and public administration reform and anti-corruption strategies. He advised the governments of Bulgaria and Lithuania on the administrative justice reform aspects of those countries’ European Union accession process. He was also a Supervisory Board Member of Raiffeisen Bank Aval, involved in the development and oversight of the bank’s strategy and corporate governance and anti-money laundering practices.

Daniel began his private sector engagement with Ukraine during Independence in 1991, acting for the Canadian Bank Note Company in printing Ukraine’s new currency, the hryvnia. At Canadian start-up Emtech, he negotiated high-tech joint ventures with Ukrainian materials science institutes tied to the previous Soviet military industrial complex, leading to joint development agreements to commercialize the technologies with the US military and global airplane manufacturers. At Kinstellar, Daniel focuses his governmental and regulatory experience on the technology, manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, and agribusiness sectors.

Since February 2022, Daniel serves as a volunteer in the Territorial Defence Forces, a branch of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He was recently awarded recognition by Ukraine’s Defence Minister “For Support to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

English, Ukrainian, French

Law Society of Ontario (Bar of Ontario), Member in good standing

1982 – 1986: McGill University, Montreal Canada, Faculty of Law, LL.B., BCL

1979 – 1982: University of Toronto, B.A. International Relations