A drawn-out corruption affair in Ukraine is widening, with authorities now taking action against Andriy Yermak, the former head of the presidential office. Will this scandal reach all the way to President Zelenskyy?
https://p.dw.com/p/5DlLCAndrii Yermak (left) and Volodymyr Zelenskyy maintained close relationsImage: Violeta Santos Moura/REUTERSAdvertisementOn May 11, Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) filed a notice of suspicion against Andrii Yermak, the former head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office. Under Ukrainian law, this step is equivalent to filing charges in court. He 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 or $10.5 million) in connection with a luxury construction project near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Charges have also been filed against six additional individuals.
"This is a particularly serious crime, said SAP head Oleksandr Klymenko at a press conference in Kyiv. "We are currently gathering evidence." SAP and NABU also filed a motion with Ukraine's anti-corruption court, requesting two months of pretrial detention for Yermak.
On Thursday, the authorities followed through, taking Yermak into custody on money laundering charges and setting bail at $3.2 million .
According to the 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 four hectares of land near the Ukrainian capital, beginning construction in 2021 on a luxury housing complex named "Dynasty." The prosecutors allege 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 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 confidant of Zelenskyy. He is a co-owner of the TV production company Kvartal 95, which the president co-founded.
Yermak is thought to have been a member of this group. His office and private home were both searched by NABU in November 2025 in connection with the current investigation. Though he was not accused of wrongdoing, he resigned from his post as the head of the presidential office, which he had held since 2020.
Yermak has called the allegations against him "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 that he would stay in Ukraine and would continue to practice law.
Long considered Ukraine's second-most powerful person, Yermak stepped back from his post as chief of staff for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year, reportedly in a bid to restore faith in the presidential office.
Some journalists have speculated that one of the homes in the Dynasty complex could even belong, via front men, to 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 SAP," NABU head Semen Kryvonos said at a press conference on May 12.
Analysts say that the case could still damage Zelenskyy's reputation. "[The affair surrounding Timur Mindich] will keep resurfacing and won't simply disappear," the 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," he 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 political scientist Volodymyr Fesenko also though that the case could damage Zelenskyy's reputation. Despite the fact that there had already been some decline in the president's approval ratings, he thought the greater risk lied ahead. "As long as Zelenskyy is president of Ukraine, he enjoys immunity. Therefore, unlike with Yermak, he cannot be investigated," Fesenko told DW, 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 advisor, Dmytro Lytvyn, told reporters that "procedural actions are still ongoing, so it is too early to draw any conclusions."
This article was originally published in Ukrainian.
Ukrainian anti-graft agency investigates top Zelenskyy aideTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
