It widened corruption scandal in Ukraine. The Minister of Justice and Energy has resigned at the request of President Volodymyr Zelensky against the backdrop of a massive bribery system in the energy sector found in the country.
“The ministers resigned in accordance with the law,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said via Telegram. Replacement from Minister of Justice, Herman Galushchenko, and Minister of Energy, Svitlana Gryntchukit must now be approved by Parliament.
The corruption case primarily involves Galushchenko, when he served as energy minister, and Timur Mindich, a close aide to Zelensky who left Ukraine shortly before the scandal broke.
“It is completely unacceptable that, under these circumstances, some strategies continue to be pursued in the energy sector”, while Ukraine is marked “by power outages, Russian attacks and losses”, the president condemned in a statement.
In contrast, the Minister of Energy was not officially named in the investigation, but according to Ukrainian media he was considered a trusted person by his predecessor.
Investigation, explosion, scandal
Earlier this week, Ukraine’s anti-corruption authorities announced that they had uncovered a massive corruption scheme involving an alleged bribery scheme of around $100 million (around €86 million) linked specifically to the state company Energoatom and allegedly orchestrated by Mindich. According to the investigation, Galushchenko took part in it when he was Minister of Energy.
The announcement came Sunday evening after several months of tension between the agencies and the government. “The work carried out has produced thousands of hours of audio recordings, which are evidence of the activities of high-level criminal organizations operating in the energy and defense sectors,” the National Corruption Eradication Agency (Nabu) announced in a statement.
NABU detailed that Operation Midas, carried out after a 15-month investigation in collaboration with the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor (SAP), exposed a criminal system that extorted funds from subcontractors of the state nuclear company. Energoatom said it would cooperate with the investigation, without commenting on the corruption allegations.
Ukrainian media reported that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau also searched the homes of the former Minister of Energy and the current Minister of Justice and Mindish.
