Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s powerful former chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has been named in local media as a suspect in a major corruption probe where it is alleged that a criminal group laundered around $10.5 million through an elite housing development outside Kyiv.
Mr Yermak, who resigned amongst allegations of corruption last year, had been widely viewed as as Ukraine’s second most powerful person after Mr Zelensky, wielding significant influence across much of Ukrainian politics despite his unelected position.
Speaking to local media, Mr Yermak refused to comment on the charges. The controversy is expected to pile further pressure on Mr Zelensky at a time when negotiations with Russia with a view to ending the 3-year war are on pause.
Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) allege that millions of dollars were funnelled through the housing project over several years using a network of shell companies, fake financial documents, and cash transactions.
The investigators say that the development plan was to construct four 1,000 square meter private mansions, with a shared wellness complex including a spa and swimming pool. Each residence is estimated to cost millions of dollars.
The Kyiv Independent reported that while the president has not made an official statement following the charges against Yermak, “Zelensky’s advisor Dmytro Lytvyn told journalists that “it is too early to assess” the ongoing procedural actions”.
Yermak, once Zelensky’s right-hand man and gatekeeper, consolidated an unprecedented amount of power as head of the President’s Office before resigning in November 2025 amid the ongoing corruption investigation.
A former lawyer and film producer with no prior political experience, Yermak leveraged his friendship and loyalty to Zelensky to quickly amass power and influence — as well as notoriety, the paper said.
Yermak, local reports say, may have been a driving force behind the attempt of the Ukrainian administration to dismantle the country’s anti-corruption agencies last year, a move that prompted mass protests. He is considered to be a formidable operative, but public anger at the corruption allegations last year prompted his resignation.
The allegations are part of a broader probe by the anti-corruption agency which last year said it was uncovering a high-level criminal scheme at the heart of the Ukrainian government. NABU said that a group of insiders had received some $100m by way of kickback from commercial partners of Ukraine’s nuclear energy body, Energoatom.
Energoatom runs three nuclear power plants and supplies Ukraine with more than half of its electricity. The Guardian reported that:
A group of insiders allegedly received kickbacks of 10-15% from Energoatom’s commercial partners. If these suppliers failed to pay up, they were removed from a list of approved counter-parties or not reimbursed for services already given. About $100m (£76m) was received in this way, Nabu says.
The alleged conspiracy had old-school touches. Its beneficiaries used code names for each other, such as “Professor”, “Karlson” and “Sugarman”. They carried blocks of cash around Kyiv in large and unwieldy bags, sometimes delivering it on foot. On one occasion, a plotter allegedly sent his wife to collect a stash of dollars, which she hid in her car.
The alleged organiser of the scheme is Timur Mindich, an old friend and business partner of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mindich co-founded Kvartal 95, the media production company set up by Zelenskyy before he went into politics.
In 2017, an Ernst & Young poll of experts ranked Ukraine ninth-most corrupt out of 53 surveyed nations. A 2021 report from the European Court of Auditors said that, despite support for reforms in Ukraine, “grand corruption and state capture are endemic in Ukraine”.
“Tens of billions of euros are lost annually as a result of corruption. The European Commission, the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the EU advisory mission have attempted to address this issue, and have backed several reforms to reinforce the rule of law and to fight corruption in Ukraine,” the report said. #
“The EU has long been aware of the connections between oligarchs, high-level officials, politicians, the judiciary and state-owned enterprises. However, it has not developed a real strategy for targeting grand corruption, the auditors note. For instance, illicit financial flows, including money-laundering, are addressed only at the margins. Nevertheless, the EU has supported many anti-corruption reforms and activities in Ukraine. In most cases, the degree of support depends on a number of conditions being met. But the Commission has often interpreted such requirements too loosely, leading to over-positive assessments.”
In 2022, as the U.S. poured aid into Ukrainen after the Russian invasion, a report from inspectors said that U.S. agencies had difficulties accounting for the billions spent. USA Today reported that:
The Pentagon spent $62.3 billion in 2022 on Ukraine for weapons, ammunition, training, logistics, supplies, salaries and stipends, according to the Joint Strategic Oversight Plan for Ukraine Response report. Inspectors general for several agencies released the report in January.
The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development spent $46 billion for activities ranging from border security to basic government services such as utilities, hospitals, schools and firefighting. Other government agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, spent another $5 billion.
The report noted the difficulty U.S. agencies had accounting for the billions spent.
The Pentagon, for example, was “unable to provide end-use monitoring in accordance with DoD policy” in Ukraine, according to a report by the Pentagon’s inspector general. “End-use monitoring” includes tracking serial numbers of weapons and ammunition to ensure they’re used as intended.
At the weekend, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said that he thought the Ukraine war was coming to an end, saying that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.