All the President’s Men: Treason, $100 million stolen cash and Zelensky’s kleptocratic inner circle.
Some of President Zelensky’s closest friends and business partners stole over $100 million that was supposed to be used to harden the defences around Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. There’s a word for this: treason. Back in July, with the help of the president himself, they tried to kill off the investigations into their crime syndicate. The biggest protests Kyiv had seen since the start of the war stopped this and Zelensky backed off. Then, on November 10, the investigators started busting down doors.
The Golden Toilet
Timur Mindich, known to some as “Zelensky’s wallet”, got tipped off just in time of a raid on his Kiev apartment by officers of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU). A luxury limo, supplied by a senior official of Ukraine’s border control, picked him up and raced him to the Polish border where he was waved through. Hours later he was in Israel where he holds citizenship, reportedly with hundreds of millions of dollars in loot secured in bitcoin.
When anti-corruption police burst into Mindich’s apartment they realised how apt the code name they had chosen was: Operation Midas. The investigators stood in awe at the gold-plated toilet and gold bidet in his bathroom. They gasped when the large safe was opened and saw stacks of brand new $US100 bills still in their plastic Treasury sleeves. They took photos of the electronic bank note counters, bags stuffed with yet more cash, and all the signs of an opulent life acquired by converting into personal loot US and EU aid destined to bolster Ukraine’s defences.
Mindich is no usual suspect
Timur Mindich co-founded the television studio Kvartal 95 which propelled his friend Volodymyr Zelensky to fame and, ultimately, the presidency, by creating a wildly popular TV series “Servant of the People” about a teacher whose anti-corruption rant sees him unexpectedly elected to the top job. Zelensky’s political party, formed to contest the 2019 elections is also Servant of the People.
Although a shadowy figure who shunned formal appointments, Mindich was a boss. Tetiana Shevchuk, of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center said: “For a long time, we have heard that Timur Mindich is a shadow controller of the energy sector.”
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) made clear what Mindich and the syndicate had done to the energy sector:
“They ensured control over personnel decisions, procurement processes, and financial flows. The management of a strategic enterprise with an annual income of over UAH 200 billion (almost $USD5 billion) was carried out by third parties who had no formal authority,” NABU said.
$100 million is the tip of the iceberg
Ukraine’s anti-corruption investigators say the same close friends and business partners of Volodymyr Zelensky have also been at work in the defence sector and in other key parts of the economy, including the port of Odessa. The Kyiv Independent reported on November 13 that defense contractor Fire Point, makers of long-range strike drones, “was the subject of an investigation into defense corruption that in part explored its connections to Mindich, who was alleged to be its unofficial beneficiary.”
Drones have been sold to the state for ridiculous prices, non-existent missiles have been bought and paid for, grain shipments don’t move without someone getting a taste.
Where this ends is unknown, but the cherished narrative of a heroic crusading President is collapsing into a swamp of scandal. Servants of the People? Two cabinet ministers, Herman Halushchenko (Justice) and Svitlana Hrynchuk (Energy), who appear prominently in 1000 hours of investigators’ wire taps, have been ousted by the parliament; other friends of Zelensky have either fled the country, been arrested or are under close investigation. Hundreds of millions, probably billions, of dollars have been looted by some of the very people whose job it is to defend the nation in a time of war.
Is Zelensky really the Servant of the People?
During his successful 2019 election campaign Volodymyr Zelensky (reprising his TV anti-corruption role) ran, for real, as President of Ukraine. Zelensky promised to root out corruption and nepotism. Once in office, however, he stacked the highest ranks of his administration with his close friends and business partners – his buddies from Kvartal 95 – who, though totally unqualified, soon found themselves in control of some of the key institutions of the state. Another Zelensky business partner, billionaire Ihor Kolomoyskiy, a co-owner of Kvartal TV, helped bankroll Zelenskyy's 2019 presidential campaign. Kolomoyskiy has been in detention since 2023 on fraud and money-laundering charges.
In a report on the rise of the Zelensky inner circle and in particular the out-sized influence of Timur Mindich, the Ukrainian news site Komersant Ukrainsky said: “Within a year (of Zelensky’s election), gas market representatives began to say that corrupt practices of the Yanukovych era were being revived in the energy sector.”
Typically, what happens, as outlined by NABU, is that once they get control of a state business, the crime syndicate extorts about 10-15% of the value of all contracts in kickbacks. Nice work if you can get it.
The real victims are the Ukrainian people
“How the president’s friends robbed the country in wartime” was a headline this week in Ukrainska Pravda. There were many similar stories in Kyiv Post, Kyiv Independent and other outlets.
Meanwhile on the front lines, Ukrainian soldiers are being killed at a terrifying pace by a Russian army that has more drones, more missiles, more shells and more battle-hardened soldiers. Hearing that defence funds have been diverted to buy gold-plated toilets does not harden martial resolve. Little wonder that desertions, according to the Ukrainian army itself, number in the tens of thousands.
In the cities of Ukraine citizens are struggling with long power outages and freezing apartments because of the increasingly successful Russian attacks on the energy infrastructure. News of the corruption scandal hardly shocks the population but it does disgust them, further eroding support for the war. US polling agency Gallup reports that a clear majority of Ukrainians want the war over, even at the cost of serious concessions to the Russians.
European and American taxpayers should be disgusted too. Media photos of piles of stolen US dollars and Euros are not going to help maintain support for more war.
The Zelensky dilemma – should the West keep hugging or cold-shoulder?
In its 2024 report, Transparency International ranked Ukraine as the second-most corrupt country in Europe and warned that it was again heading in the wrong direction. Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt judiciary has not been reformed.
Despite this, the Euro elites remain determined to bring Ukraine into the European Union and as recently as last month gave the country high praise for its success in rooting out corruption! Ursula von der Leyen spoke of Ukraine's "remarkable commitment to its European path over the past year." It is yet another example of the way these elites have immunised themselves from harsh realities.
The recent fall of the city of Pokrovsk and the likely fall of other major centres, including Myrnohrad and Kupiansk, indicate that the tide of the war is not only inexorably in Russia’s favour but that the pace of Russian advances is quickening. This would be a dangerous time to have a change of leadership so the most likely (but not certain) choice by the Europeans and Americans is to shrug at the rotten state of the Kyiv regime and box on.
The buck stops with Zelensky
The buck, possibly suitcases full of them, stops with Zelensky. It was he, often by decree, or with the backing of his Servant of the People party, who put all these people in place.
Is he involved, as some say, in corruption? I can’t say but I know that no government in the West – except Trump’s – could have presided over similar levels of criminality and have remained in office.
In the West beatifying Volodymyr Zelensky is doctrinal fundamentalism. He has been crucially important to building support amongst Western voters for a war that is draining hundreds of billions of dollars away from more productive activities in their own countries. In this respect, I am a heretic: I see him as a flawed man trapped in circumstances largely beyond his control, subject to cruel people and tectonic pressures on all sides.
Eugene Doyle
