11/18/2025
Inside the Ukrainian Corruption Probe Edging Closer to Zelensky
KYIV, Ukraine—It was just past 2 a.m. when Tymur Mindich crossed the border into Poland last week—a few hours before detectives descended on his Ukrainian home as part of an investigation into high-level corruption that has convulsed the war-torn country.
Some 70 residences across Ukraine were raided in the operation as part of the criminal investigation in which five people were detained. Mindich, a former business partner of President Volodymyr Zelensky and one of those officially accused, remains at large outside Ukraine.
“Was he warned?” Semen Kryvonos, director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the independent law-enforcement agency which conducted the operation, said in a video interview with Ukrainian media. “This must be investigated.”
Mindich couldn’t be reached for comment.
The corruption allegations have angered Ukrainians enduring wartime hardships, and now pose the clearest threat to Zelensky’s leadership since Russia’s abortive attempt to take Kyiv in early 2022.
The investigation has reached higher in the government—and closer to Zelensky himself—than any other since he took office. Anticorruption activists say that the NABU operation is part of a generational struggle to dismantle the Ukrainian culture of kleptocracy that dates back to the Soviet era. Though Zelensky rose to power on promises to end endemic corruption and graft, activists are now questioning whether he is still committed to the idea.
According to NABU investigators, Mindich, who co-founded a production company with Zelensky before he became president, was the leader of a “criminal organization” that siphoned off $100 million through Ukraine’s state nuclear-energy company, Energoatom.
He has been officially accused of creating and leading a criminal organization operating in the energy sector and of money laundering.
According to the investigators, in collaboration with employees of Energoatom, Mindich and others pressured contractors with the company to pay 10-15% of the value of the contracts in kickbacks. Those who refused risked having their contracts canceled, investigators allege.
In a statement, Energoatom’s supervisory board said it was undertaking an evaluation of the company’s procedures. It has said it takes the allegations against its employees seriously and is committed to ensuring full transparency and accountability.
Zelensky wasn’t named in the corruption probe and hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing. Zelensky’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
As investigators have made details about the investigation public—like Mindich’s dead-of-night escape and audio recordings of suspects discussing how best to carry large volumes of cash—Ukrainians have grown furious.
Through the war, middle- and working-class citizens have donated to help military units buy drones or vehicles. Now, many suspect their leaders were enriching themselves while poor Ukrainians were making sacrifices.
The timing of the probe adds insult to injury: Much of the country is dealing with blackouts—which leave many homes without heat—following Russian strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure. According to NABU’s findings, contracts to install protection over energy sites this fall were delayed while an Energoatom official held out for a larger payoff.
Abroad, the threat to Zelensky is just as stark. President Trump has already, at times, expressed reluctance to continue sending weapons and other aid to Ukraine, while other American officials have questioned how Kyiv is using American funds. Even allegations of corruption in Zelensky’s administration risk the U.S. turning off the aid spigot.
Zelensky has tried to make a forceful stand in response to the allegations. He demanded the resignations of two cabinet ministers, one of whom was allegedly part of the Energoatom kickback scheme. He also imposed sanctions on Mindich and another businessman implicated in the investigation. He has now begun an audit of state-owned companies, and says the entire Energy Ministry will be reorganized under new leadership.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that, amid all this, there are also some schemes in the energy sector,” Zelensky said in a public address last week. “Right now we all must protect Ukraine. Undermining the state means you will be held accountable. Breaking the law means you will be held accountable.”
Daria Kaleniuk, co-founder of the nongovernmental Anticorruption Action Center, said Zelensky has the chance to emerge from the war as a Ukrainian Winston Churchill but needs to take decisive action now.
“We can fight Russia much better if there’s better governance,” she said. If Zelensky tries to get his friends out of trouble, she added, “it will ruin the country and ruin himself.”
Corruption has been one of the most explosive political issues in Ukraine since the country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Anger at self-dealing in the government helped fuel a revolution in 2014, which ousted then-President Viktor Yanukovych. His grand personal residence, which included a menagerie of exotic animals and a golden toilet, was turned into a Museum of Corruption, open to the public. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation helped set up NABU in the aftermath of the revolution.
When Zelensky ran for the presidency in 2019, he made cracking down on corruption one of his signature platforms. Early in his tenure, he recorded videos encouraging citizens to report any foul play to NABU, which operates largely outside the president’s control. He also established a court for high-level cases, and one of his associates, Ihor Kolomoisky, is in pretrial detention for alleged financial fraud. He has denied wrongdoing.
However, as Zelensky’s term has gone on, questions have mounted over how dedicated the president remains to rooting out corruption.
In 2020, a NABU investigation into a deputy head of Zelensky’s office was removed from the agency and handed to the prosecutor general, who is appointed by the president—a move widely seen in Ukraine as an effort to protect a political ally of Zelensky. The case has since been closed. Zelensky’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
This year, as the NABU investigation into corruption at Energoatom picked up steam, officials from the agency said they faced what they described as efforts to impede their work.
In July, a detective working on the investigation, Ruslan Magomedrasulov, was detained by the Security Services of Ukraine, known as the SBU, an agency whose director is appointed by Zelensky. He remains in pretrial detention on charges that he was working with Russia. His father was also arrested.
Magomedrasulov’s lawyer, Olena Scherban, said the allegations against him were fabricated, and were designed to interfere not only with the Energoatom investigation, but to find out what information NABU had, and deter the agency from pursuing cases against the country’s most powerful.
“It was an attempt to stop NABU’s special operation,” Scherban said.
The day after Magomedrasulov’s detention, Ukraine’s Parliament passed a bill that stripped NABU and its sister agency, the Special Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office, of independence, effectively giving the president a check on their activities. Zelensky signed the bill the day it was passed, but quickly reversed course after nationwide public protests erupted.
The political upheaval in July “clearly influenced the investigation,” code named “Midas,” into Energoatom, Kryvonos said in a video interview with Ukrainska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet. “If the independence of NABU and SAPO hadn’t been restored at that time, the ‘Midas’ operation simply wouldn’t have happened.”
Kryvonos said the funds which were allegedly siphoned off in the scheme have since been dispersed throughout numerous foreign countries and used to purchase property and other assets.
In one set of recordings made public by investigators, associates discuss sending payments of $6 million, divided between different tranches, to Mindich in Switzerland, where he was buying a house.
Mindich left the country legally last week, according to the border guards. Investigators said they didn’t warn the border guards about the operation ahead of time because of the risk that they might tip off suspects.
Kryvonos added that NABU was still hunting suspects in the investigation.
“We will identify every one of them,” he said.
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/inside-the-ukrainian-corruption-probe-edging-closer-to-zelensky-eb8d9f81?
The investigation has reached higher up in Ukraine and closer to the president himself than any other during his tenure.
