Operation “Midas”: about $100 million passed through the office of those involved – Kryvonos

Source: director of the bureau on the air of the UP.Chat program

The direct speech of Kryvonos: “We found during the documentation that about $100 million passed through the office one way or another. It could be a lot more. That’s what we found operationally.”

Details: He explained that the next stage of this investigation (after covert investigative actions and after the arrest of those involved and the selection of preventive measures for them – ed.) will be a financial investigation.

“In the process of the financial investigation and analysis of those seized documents – and we seized interesting documents – we will be able to see and establish where these funds were transferred, how they were converted, perhaps into real estate, into assets, or remained in bank accounts – abroad, in some jurisdictions,” Kryvonos clarified.

He added that there will still be “very painstaking investigative work”, in the framework of which the bureau will interact with Ukrainian state bodies – such as the State Monitoring Service – and with foreign jurisdictions to track the movement of these funds.

“Now (we – ed.) need to track the movement of funds through state or private banks, the movement of funds abroad, they (those involved in the case – ed.) often used, according to our information, cryptocurrency – this will also greatly complicate this whole story. We will need the help of law enforcement officers of other countries, it may be necessary to resolve the issue of creating “jits” (JIT – short for English Joint Investigation Team – ed.) so-called, that is, joint investigative teams that demonstrated a very high level of corruption its effectiveness,” Kryvonos explained.

Read also: From the minister to the “watchers”: how the Energoatom embezzlement scheme worked and who is behind it

Prehistory:

• On November 10, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine announced that it had uncovered a large-scale corruption scheme for embezzling funds in the energy sector, as well as made public audio recordings of the negotiations of the participants in this case. Before that, UP sources reported that NABU is conducting searches of businessman Timur Mindich and Minister of Justice Herman Galushchenko. Interlocutors of the UP also noted that Mindich fled abroad a few hours before the searches.
• On November 11, journalists revealed the names of all those involved in the investigation of mass corruption at Energoatom, who received suspicion from NABU. According to the “Schemes” project, Timur Mindich (who is called “Carlson” in the NABU audio recordings – ed.), ex-adviser to the Minister of Energy Ihor Myronyuk (“Rocket”), Dmytro Basov (“Tenor”), executive director of security at “Energoatom”, Oleksandr Zukermana (“Sugarman”), Ihor Fursenko (“Ryoshik”), Lesya Ustymenko and Lyudmila Zorina received suspicions.
• Five persons from the list of suspects have been detained. Two of them – Mindich and Zukerman – left Ukraine.
• Basova, Myronyuk, Fursenko, Ustymenko and Zorinii chose precautionary measures with the possibility of bail. Later, it became known that the High Anti-Corruption Court received bail for the money-laundering “back-office” workers around Energoatom, Lesya Ustymenko and Lyudmila Zorina.
• On November 12, Minister of Justice Herman Galushchenko was removed from his post after a high-profile NABU investigation into corruption at Energoatom NAEC.
• On November 13, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council to impose sanctions against the businessman, co-owner of the studio “Kvartal-95” and his associate Timur Mindich and businessman Oleksandr Zukerman.