This Friday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine (SAP) carried out searches on the head of the Ukrainian presidential office, Andri Yermak, as NABU itself announced in a brief statement.
“NABU and SAP carry out investigative measures, searches, at the head of the office of the President of Ukraine. The measures are authorized and are carried out within the framework of an investigation,” reads the NABU note, which adds that it will provide more details shortly.
According to the publication searches have been carried out in Yermak’s office and in the presidential headquarters apartment where the Ukrainian president’s top advisor, , lives since the beginning of the war.
Yerman himself later confirmed those records and offered his “full cooperation” in the investigation. “There is no obstacle to investigators. They have been given full access to the apartment,” Yermak said on his Telegram account, explaining that his lawyers are in contact with the detectives carrying out the searches.
The alleged plot
Ukrainian media relate these NABU measures against the president’s most trusted person to the case recently opened by the agency against an alleged plot that collected bribes from contractors of the public atomic energy company in times of war.
The plot, which would be led by former businessman and former business partner of Zelensky Timur Mindich, would be made up of former Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko and other former members of the government.
NABU chief Semén Krivonos said this week that investigations into the plot would continue and that the agency was preparing new charges.
Krivonos also said – referring to the delicate negotiations in which the US raised with Ukraine the possibility of ceding territory to Russia to end the war – that the investigation would not be influenced by issues of “geopolitics.”
In one of his speeches about the peace plan aligned with the Russian demands that the US presented to kyiv, Zelensky called for burying internal wars and forging a common front to strengthen the Ukrainian position in the negotiations.
The Ukrainian president attempted in July to subordinate NABU to the prosecutor general, a figure appointed by the executive branch over whom the presidency has control.
This maneuver, ultimately frustrated by citizen protests and pressure from kyiv’s European partners, was interpreted by many in Ukraine as an attempt by Zelensky to stop NABU investigations that could affect his immediate environment.
