Ukraine’s anti-corruption agency said today it was conducting large-scale raids targeting the country’s energy sector — an operation that comes after months of infighting over Kyiv’s anti-graft efforts.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) said the operation — carried out in collaboration with the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office — was designed “to expose corruption” in the key sector.
President Volodymyr Zelensky had tried this summer to strip powers from both agencies via a law removing their independence — a move that triggered rare public backlash and the largest protests since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
Ukraine has long been plagued by corruption — which has been the focus of public protests throughout its 30-year independence.
Reforms were introduced after the revolution of 2014 but there are fears that Zelensky’s abortive bid this summer to change the law governing the anti-graft agencies could undermine Ukraine’s ambitions to join the European Union.
The president’s office said in the summer that the law aimed to improve the functioning of the two bodies.
But it scrapped the legislation after public outcry and concerns from Kyiv’s European partners.
NABU said a “high-level criminal organisation” had “established a large-scale corruption scheme to influence strategic enterprises in the state sector”, including major nuclear power provider Energoatom.
It published photographs showing bags stashed full of dollar and euro banknotes but provided no further details about the operation.
It did not say where or when the photos were taken.
Russia has pounded Ukraine’s strategic energy sector with missile and drone attacks throughout the nearly four-year invasion.
The former head of Ukraine’s state-run electricity grid, Volodymyr Kudrytsky, was arrested last month on embezzlement charges.
Now on bail, he has denied the charges, which he says are politically motivated and “could not have happened without the involvement of the presidential office”.
Ukrainian media reported that NABU had also raided the house of former energy minister German Galushchenko and close Zelensky ally Timur Mindich.
NABU did not comment on those reports in its statement on Monday.
Mindich is a co-owner of production studio Kvartal 95. It was founded in the early 2000s by Zelensky, who was a former star comedian before he ran for office.
