A former top aide to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appeared in court as prosecutors seek his arrest on charges of involvement in a multimillion-dollar money laundering scheme.
Prosecutors allege that Yermak, 54, funnelled about 460 million Ukrainian hryvnias ($10.5m) into a high-end Dynasty housing complex in Kozyn, near Kyiv.
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Investigators suspect that funds used in the development may have originated from corruption at Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company.
The prosecution has asked the court to remand Yermak in custody, with bail set at 180 million Ukrainian hryvnias ($4m).
Yermak denied the allegations.
The hearing is due to resume on Wednesday.
“The notice of suspicion is unfounded,” Yermak wrote on Telegram following Tuesday’s proceedings. “As a lawyer with more than 30 years of experience, I have always been guided by the law. And now I will likewise defend my rights, my name, and my reputation.”
Earlier, during a break in proceedings, he told reporters: “I own only one apartment and one car.”
The case is part of a broader anticorruption operation, dubbed “Midas”, led by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The operation was unveiled last November, when Timur Mindich, a former business associate of Zelenskyy, was accused of orchestrating a $100m kickback scheme at Energaotom.
Mindich, who denies the allegations, has fled to Israel.
Prosecutors said Mindich and several other senior officials, including former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Chernyshov, are “implicated” in the Dynasty case.
They said Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council and a key negotiator in the United States-led efforts at peace with Russia, has also been questioned and is a witness in the case.
Corruption scandal
Yermak, a one-time film producer who helped engineer Zelenskyy’s unlikely ascent from playing a fictional president on television to leading a country at war, resigned as chief of staff in November after investigators raided his home as part of the Energoatom probe.
NABU chief Semen Kryvonos confirmed on Tuesday that Zelenskyy himself was not the subject of any investigation.
A sitting president cannot legally be investigated.
Zelenskyy has not commented publicly on the charges against his former aide. A communications adviser said on Monday that it was too early to address the matter.
The latest charges come with Ukraine still dependent on critical Western financial aid, contingent partly on anticorruption reforms. The US-backed peace push has stalled in the fifth year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine’s government last year attempted to strip the independence of NABU and SAPO, which were established after a pro-democracy uprising in 2014.
The move triggered rare wartime antigovernment protests and forced Zelenskyy to walk back the decision after criticism from the European Union, Kyiv’s key financial and military backer.
Some lawmakers, including members of Zelenskyy’s governing Servant of the People party, saw a silver lining in the case against Yermak, saying it served as an encouraging sign of Ukraine’s drive to fight corruption.
“Partners see that Ukraine has an independent anticorruption system that is performing its function,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the parliamentary foreign-affairs committee.
Zelenskyy’s public approval has remained relatively stable in recent months, despite the heightened focus on corruption, with about 58 percent of Ukrainians trusting the president, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology said on May 4.
In a May 6 poll, however, it found that 54 percent believe corruption is a greater threat to Ukraine’s development than Russia’s war, when given an option between the two.
