РУССКИЙ
15:28 14.05.2026 •
Ukraine’s supreme anticorruption court has arrested President Zelensky’s former chief of staff Andriy Yermak for two months imposing a bail of 140 million hryvnias (about $5.4 million), UNIAN news agency reported.
Earlier, the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) said that Yermak is suspected of having laundered 460 million hryvnias (more than $10.5 million) through a luxury real estate project near Kyiv. After the court session, Yermak said he rejected the claims as “unfounded” and that he was going to appeal the court’s ruling.
“I stay in Ukraine. I have nothing to hide,” he added. He said that he did not have 140 million hryvnias to pay the bail, and that his attorneys would be asking his friends to provide the required sum.
When speaking at Wednesday’s session of the Supreme Anti-Corruption Court, Yermak’s attorney, Ihor Fomin, dismissed the report on his client being held in suspicion, as groundless. He insisted that prosecutors had failed to corroborate their demand for Yermak’s detention.
On May 11, the prosecution claimed that, as a member of an organized criminal group, Yermak was involved in laundering 460 million hryvnias through the high-end development in the Kyiv region.
In audio recordings released by the prosecution, Yermak is mentioned as R2. According to the investigation, in 2021 and early 2022 Yermak discussed with a designer the furnishing of a villa in the Dynasty cooperative, the online newspaper Strana reported. The construction was supervised by then Minister of Communities and Territories Development Oleksiy Chernyshev.
Anti-corruption agencies believe that the participants in the criminal scheme agreed to build four residential residences. The financing of the work was kept under wraps, using criminally obtained cash and other means. Investigators believe $9 million was laundered during construction.
On May 12, the court postponed the selection of a preventive measure for Andriy Yermak due to the large size of the case, which consists of 16 volumes, each 250 pages long.
In November 2025, President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Yermak from his position as the head of his office. Earlier that day, NABU and SAPO officers searched his home. Yermak was also implicated in the "Midas" investigation, a corruption scheme involving the state-owned concern Energoatom (the operator of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants), believed to be masterminded by businessman and Zelensky’s associate Timur Mindych, who has fled the country.
Experts and some Ukrainian politicians believe that President Zelensky’s silence following the arrest of his former chief might be an attempt to whitewash a member of his inner circle, and hope that the West, which is spending billions in its support for Kyiv, will not let him do this.
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