A drawn-out corruption affair in Ukraine has widened, with authorities now taking action against Andriy Yermak, former head of the presidential office. Will the scandal reach all the way to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy?
Yermak was accused of "money laundering as part of an organized group," a charge that can lead to a prison sentence of eight to 12 years. According to anti-corruption authorities, the group to which Yermak is alleged to have belonged is estimated to have laundered 460 million hryvnia (€9 million/$10.5 million) in connection with a luxury construction project near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv . Charges have also been filed against six other people.
"This is a particularly serious crime," said SAPO head Oleksandr Klymenko at a press conference in Kyiv. "We are currently gathering evidence." SAPO and NABU have also filed a motion with Ukraine's anti-corruption court, requesting two months of pretrial detention for Yermak.
Money laundered through luxury housing complex?
According to investigators, the affair dates back to 2018 when one of the members of the accused criminal group became a co-founder of the company BLOOM Development, as evidenced in a video released by NABU. In the summer of 2019, the company acquired more than 4 hectares (about 10 acres) of land near Kyiv, beginning construction on a luxury housing complex named Dynasty two years later.
Prosecutors have alleged that the site was used to funnel illicitly obtained funds back into the legal economic system, using fictitious documents, cash transactions and shell companies. The accused are alleged to have generated the money from various sources, including corrupt schemes involving the state-owned nuclear energy company Energoatom .
A man who goes by the alias Karlson is thought to have headed the group. According to media reports, Karlson is the businessman Timur Mindich, a close associate and former business partner of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mindich is a co-owner of the TV production company Kvartal 95, which the president co-founded.
Yermak called the allegations against him this week "unfounded," and denied accusations that he owns a home in the Dynasty complex. On Thursday, he posted a statement on Telegram claiming that in recent months there had been "unprecedented public pressure on law enforcement agencies" to launch an investigation against him. He said he would stay in Ukraine and would continue to practice law.
Is Zelenskyy at all involved?
Some journalists have speculated that one of the homes in the Dynasty complex could even belong, via front men, to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with whom Yermak maintained a close relationship. However, Ukraine's corruption authorities have denied these reports.
"The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was not and is not the subject of the preliminary investigations by NABU and SAPO," NABU head Semen Kryvonos said at a press conference on Tuesday.
But analysts have said the case could still damage Zelenskyy's reputation. "[The affair surrounding Timur Mindich] will keep resurfacing and won't simply disappear," Ukrainian political scientist Petro Oleshchuk told DW, though he did not think it would have an immediate impact.
"It will remain a lingering aspect of how the president's work is perceived," Oleshchuk said, explaining that both political opponents at home and external actors could have an interest in keeping the spotlight on this case. He also did not rule out the possibility that the Ukrainian leader could be blackmailed into accepting a scenario to end the war that was unfavorable to the country.
Ukrainian anti-graft agency investigates top Zelenskyy aide To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst at the Penta think tank in Kyiv, also thought the case could damage Zelenskyy's reputation. Despite the fact that there had already been some decline in the president's approval ratings, he thinks the greater risk lies ahead.
"As long as Zelenskyy is president of Ukraine, he enjoys immunity. Therefore, unlike with Yermak, he cannot be investigated," said Fesenko, suggesting that the problems would begin when the war ended and the election campaign began. "Then, all the compromising material related to this case and, more generally, to 'Mindichgate,' could be used against Volodymyr Zelenskyy." Zelenskyy has not yet commented on the matter. Earlier this week, his communications adviser, Dmytro Lytvyn, told reporters that "procedural actions are still ongoing, so it is too early to draw any conclusions." This article was originally written in Ukrainian.
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