Just as the Ukrainian president is pushing to secure rapid EU membership for Ukraine, a deepening corruption scandal in Kyiv is undermining his case that the country is ready to join. On Monday, prosecutors charged Andriy Yermak — once one of Zelenskyy’s closest confidantes — with corruption and money laundering. In a statement, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s office described Yermak, who Zelenskyy dismissed in November, as “a member of an organized crime group, involved in laundering [€8.9 million] on elite construction near Kyiv.” The move follows the leak of a batch of transcripts of phone conversations that allegedly further implicate national-security aides and close associates of Zelenskyy in kickback schemes and influence-peddling scams, tied mostly to the energy and defense sectors but also to a recently nationalized bank. “I was waiting for this,” Oleksiy Goncharenko, one of the two opposition lawmakers who obtained and published the transcripts, told POLITICO.
Published: May 12, 2026 5:01 pm
Source: politico.eu — Read original