Online Reporter
Golden toilet bowls. Stacks of dollars fresh from the US Federal Reserve. A courier complaining that hauling $1.6 million in cash “is no easy job.” More than a thousand hours of wiretaps – filled with laughter, swearing, and the careless voices of men discussing how to split state contracts, who to bribe, and who should be placed in key government posts.
These are fragments of a vast corruption saga now unfolding in Ukraine — a scandal whose scale and brazenness have stunned even the country’s Western sponsors.
The latest chapter began with raids on November 10, when officers from Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies searched the Kiev apartment of businessman and media producer Timur Mindich.
A few hours earlier, he had quietly left the country — likely warned about the coming operation. That would not be surprising: Mindich is not just any fixer, but a close ally and long time associate of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
What exactly lies at the heart of this sprawling corruption scandal? How far will its shockwaves travel — through Ukraine, through its Western backers, and through the war itself? And can a leader who has already outlived his legal mandate once again slip out of the crisis untouched?
The fall of the anti-corruption myth
When Zelensky rose to power, he did so in a role that blurred fiction and reality. Ukraine was not simply electing a politician — it was electing the protagonist of a television series. In Servant of the People, Zelensky played Vasily Goloborodko, a humble history teacher who accidentally becomes Ukraine’s president and sets out to wage war on entrenched corruption.
Throughout the series, the creators hammered home one theme: the rot begins when the people closest to the president use personal access to build corrupt networks of their own.
That message became the backbone of Zelensky’s 2019 campaign. He accused then-leader Petr Poroshenko of surrounding himself with oligarchs, promised to dismantle corrupt patronage networks, and championed the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption bodies.
Back then, he insisted he would never interfere with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau or Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (NABU and SAP) — the very institutions now driving the case against his closest associate.
Six years later, everything changed. In July 2025, Zelensky moved to strip both NABU and SAP of their independence, pushing to place them under a loyal prosecutor general. At that same moment — as is now known for certain — NABU was conducting secret surveillance against his long-time friend Timur Mindich.
What once looked like political manoeuvring suddenly gained clarity. The man who promised to keep anti-corruption agencies free from interference had tried to bring them under his control precisely when they were listening to his own inner circle.
NABU holds more than a thousand hours of recordings. They suggest that Mindich — a fixture in Zelensky’s entourage — used his proximity to the country’s de facto leader to build a sprawling kickback system in the energy and defence sectors. At least four ministers appear implicated. Whether Zelensky himself was directly involved remains unknown.
Mindich could have shed light on those questions — had investigators managed to question him. But before they could, he received an advance warning of the impending raid, reportedly leaked from inside the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office.
And somehow, during curfew, Mindich managed to pass through Ukraine’s border checkpoints and leave the country just hours before his arrest. He is now believed to be hiding abroad – likely in Israel.
The man behind the power
To understand the shockwaves of the Mindich affair, one must first understand the man himself — a figure who rarely appeared in public, yet moved through Kiev’s political and business circles with the ease of someone who never needed a formal title.
Timur Mindich began as a media entrepreneur. He co-founded Kvartal 95, the production studio that transformed Zelensky from comedian into a national celebrity. For years, Mindich handled business deals, contracts, casting agencies, and spin-off ventures. He was not merely a colleague – he was part of the tight inner circle that built Zelensky’s career long before he entered politics.
He also had another powerful connection: Igor Kolomoisky. Ukrainian media long described Mindich as the oligarch’s trusted fixer — a man who arranged everything from logistics and personal errands to business negotiations. Ukrainian media noted that Kolomoisky sometimes called him a “would-be son-in-law,” a reference to Mindich’s past engagement to his daughter.
For a time, Mindich acted as an informal go-between for the oligarch and Zelensky — a man who could arrange meetings, solve problems, or pass along requests.
After Zelensky took power, this relationship deepened. According to Strana.ua, Mindich gradually moved out of Kolomoisky’s orbit and into Zelensky’s. He became one of the few people the new leader fully trusted. Their families were close; their business interests intertwined. Ukrainian journalists noted that in 2019 Zelensky even used Mindich’s car. In 2021, at the height of coronavirus restrictions, Zelensky celebrated his birthday in Mindich’s apartment – a gathering that raised questions at the time, and far more now.
The two men also owned apartments in the same elite building on Grushevskogo Street, a residence filled with ministers, MPs, security officials, and politically connected businessmen. They lived, worked, and socialized within the same ecosystem.
Everything pointed to a close personal bond. Yet Mindich held no government post. He was not a minister, a deputy, or an adviser. He wielded influence not through office, but through proximity – a “grey cardinal” of the system Zelensky built around himself.
Opposition figures began calling him “the wallet” — the man who handled the money flows tied to Zelensky’s entourage. Some Ukrainian MPs alleged that informal decisions about appointments, tenders, and budgets were made in Mindich’s apartment, not in government offices. One later-released photograph of the residence – complete with marble floors, chandeliers, and a gold-plated toilet – only fueled that perception.
A kickback machine built on war and energy
It is only now — through leaked recordings, investigative files, and months of reporting by Ukrainian journalists — that the true scale of Mindich’s influence has come into view. What investigators gradually pieced together was a protection racket built into Ukraine’s most sensitive spheres: energy and defence.
The most detailed part of the scheme involves Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear operator. This company provides more than half of the country’s electricity — a lifeline during wartime blackouts. To shield the grid during the war, Ukrainian law introduced a special rule: courts are forbidden from enforcing debts against Energoatom until hostilities end.
In practice, this meant that Energoatom paid contractors only after work was completed, but contractors could not sue the company to recover overdue payments, and therefore had no legal leverage if Energoatom simply refused to pay.
Mindich and his circle saw an opening — and turned it into a business.
According to prosecutors, Mindich (listed on recordings as “Karlson” and his associates approached contractors with a simple proposition: Pay us 10–15 percent of your contract value — or you will not be paid at all.
If a company refused, its payments were blocked indefinitely. Some contractors were told outright that their firms would be destroyed, bankrupted, or stripped of their contracts. In several cases, threats escalated to warnings that company employees might be “mobilised” to the front.
Mindich and his team jokingly called the scheme “the shlagbaum” — the barrier. Pay, and the barrier lifts. Refuse, and your business collapses.
The scope of the scheme was staggering. According to the investigation, a hidden office in central Kiev was responsible for processing black cash, maintaining parallel accounting, and laundering funds through a network of offshore companies.
Through this “laundry,” approximately US$100 million passed in recent years — all during a full-scale war, when Ukraine was publicly pleading with Western governments for emergency energy support. – RT.com
