Thousands of Ukrainians demonstrated last July, for the first time in nearly four years of war, to defend the independence of the country’s anti-corruption agencies. President Volodymyr Zelensky had to withdraw a bill that placed the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) under government control. The population rebelled precisely because these two organizations acted as they did this Monday. NABU and SAPO have presented evidence of a possible multimillion-dollar fraud against the state atomic energy company Energoatom. In addition to searching the offices of Energoatom, they did the same at the homes of Justice Minister German Galushchenko and a close friend of Zelensky, businessman Timur Mindich.
Mindich crossed the border a few hours before the search was carried out, according to the newspaper. Ukrainian Pravda. Mindich is Zelenski’s partner in Kvartal 95, the audiovisual production company with which the president found success as an actor and producer. The name of this businessman was one of the reasons taken into consideration in July to explain the express proposal that Zelensky presented in Parliament to change the autonomy of NABU and SAPO. The opposition parties Holos and European Solidarity believe that the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office has hundreds of hours of recordings of Mindich in which the president’s closest circle could be targeted.
NABU made public this Monday audio that would confirm that senior officials from the government, Energoatom and other public bodies have asked for bribes of up to 15% to award public contracts or to ensure that the beneficiaries do not lose their favor. The anti-corruption agencies would also have evidence that the purchase of technical material had been budgeted for up to three times higher than the actual amount.
Galuschenko, one of the most senior ministers in the Zelenskiy government, was head of Energy until last July. The details of Mindich’s possible connection to this alleged fraud network around Energoatom are unknown. Yaroslav Zehelzniak, MP from the opposition Golos party, assured on his social networks that NABU is investigating Mindich for acting as an intermediary between senior officials of the Ministry of Energy and contracting companies.
Until now, the possibility that Mindich was being investigated by his company Firepoint had been considered. This company was originally a representative agency until 2022, in the first year of the Russian invasion, Mindich transformed it into a defense company. Firepoint has become one of Ukraine’s most important weapons producers in record time, with the FP-1 long-range bomb drone and the Flamingo cruise missile, the first domestically produced, as its flagships. Firepoint is being investigated for unjustifiably increasing production costs and receiving more public funds, according to mainstream Ukrainian media reports.
This Monday’s anti-corruption raid coincides with the worst energy crisis in Ukraine so far during the war. Russian bombing caused power outages in large cities across the country for more than 12 hours a day. Zelensky has insisted since last October, when enemy attacks on Ukraine’s energy industry intensified, that he will not tolerate negligence in protecting production facilities and substations.
The main scapegoat for Zelenskiy’s heavy hand in this field was Volodymyr Kudritsky, former president of Ukrenergo, the state company that manages the electricity grid. Kruditski was accused by the Security Services of Ukraine (SSU, under the Interior Ministry) of “money laundering, large-scale fraud and abuse of power.” He was arrested last October and released on bail. Prominent civil anti-corruption and pro-human rights institutions in Ukraine and the EU assure that Kruditski is a victim of political persecution because this executive committed public negligence in the energy sector.
Concern in the EU
The fight against corruption is the main obstacle Ukraine faces in its bid to join the European Union. Zelensky’s initiative to limit the autonomy of NABU and SAPO, organizations with full EU support, marked the first serious clash between the Ukrainian leader and Brussels. “The political and legislative pressure on anti-corruption bodies and civil society is worrying,” European Commissioner for Enlargement Marta Kos said on Ukrainian Suspilne television on November 5: “This situation can undermine trust and slow down the accession process if adequate measures are not taken.”
According to polls, the situation is received particularly negatively even among citizens, who believe that while ordinary citizens constantly suffer from deprivation, there are people in power who profit during the war.
They are people like Olga Fedechishena, a retired civil servant from a Kiev district who, to earn extra money, works as a domestic worker. At home there were 10-hour power and heating outages for three days. «This news is inconceivable, it has made our difficulties even more painful», says Fedechisena.
An hour before EL PAÍS’s dialogue with Fedechishena, Natalia Boiko, advisor to the Ukrainian Prime Minister, said in a conference of the Kiev Security Forum that Ukrainian citizens must learn to save electricity: “The population takes energy for granted, that’s why they want to wear a T-shirt at home. Ukrainians must learn to be responsible in their electricity consumption, this must be our religion.”
