AJ
Former Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko was detained while attempting to cross the border, according to NABU, stating that Galushchenko was better-known for his role in the NABU case of embezzlement at Energoatom.
According to NABU, investigative actions were ongoing, which were carried out in accordance with the requirements of the law and court sanctions.
Galushchenko previously claimed to be a witness in the Energoatom embezzlement case, noting that he was questioned once: “I didn’t actually hide it, I gave evidence, answered questions,” but when asked if he expected suspicions to be declared against him at the time, Galushchenko said: “Listen, you can expect anything – I don’t know.”
NABU announced the conduct of a large-scale operation Midas to expose corruption in the energy sector, conducting more than 170 searches as part of it, and according to the investigators, organisers of the scheme received up to 15% of the value of contracts from Energoatem in the form of kickbacks, which were paid by the company’s counterparties, who were imposed on them by the participants of the scheme.
According to the investigation, NABU claims that the money was laundered in so-called back offices in the centre of Kyiv, including the premises which belonged to the former People’s Deputy and current Senator of the Russian Federation Andriy Derkach – as the investigation found that the suspects laundered $100 million.
On November 10, NABU published recordings of conversations of the defendants with codenames, and later it became known who they were, including the main defendants Tim Mindich (co-owner of Quarter 95), who had the codename Karlson, and Oleksandr Zukerman, codename Sugarman, but they left the country shortly before the searches, although subsequent sanctions were imposed and they were put on the wanted list.
According to the head of the NABU detective group, Oleksandr Abakumov, there were four ministers of the Ukrainian government from different periods that were recorded in the corruption case in the energy sector.
One of the accused is former Minister of Energy and Minister of Justice Herman Galushchenko, who had also been searched, while on November 12, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko submitted to the Rada a resolution on his dismissal, along with that of the Head of the Ministry of Energy Svitlana Grinchuk, which were adopted by the parliament on November 19.
Former Minister of Economy of Ukraine in 2019-2020 and President of the Kyiv School of Economics, Tymofiy Mylovanov, announced that he was leaving the Supervisory Board of Energoatom.
After this, Prime Minister Svrydenko announced that the government was restarting Energoatom’s activities – the first decision was to dissolve the company’s Supervisory Board and a new composition should be elected by the end of the year.
