KYIV — Andriy Yermak once mingled with world leaders; now he’s languishing in a Kyiv cell over money-laundering charges.
Ukraine’s top anti-corruption court on Thursday locked up President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s former adviser for two months in a pre-trial detention center with bail set at $3 million.
Earlier this week, state investigators charged Yermak with corruption. Yermak — who, until his spectacular fall in November last year, was the second most powerful person in Ukraine — firmly denied all accusations in court.
“I don’t have such funds. Now my lawyer will work with my friends for help [to collect the bail funds],” Yermak told Ukrainian journalists after the decision was announced Thursday.
“I think my attorney, the group of lawyers, will file an appeal. I have nothing to hide, I will continue fighting, and I will stay in Ukraine,” Yermak added.
In his role as Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff, Yermak helped shape Ukraine’s wartime diplomacy and was rarely absent from high-stakes meetings with world leaders, in summit venues from Washington to Brussels.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office charged Yermak with corruption earlier this week. Investigators said he was a member of an organized crime group, involved in laundering $10.4 million on a luxury construction project near Kyiv.
The watchdogs did not name Yermak, but said the latest charges relate to the so-called Midas operation, a $100 million corruption scandal at Ukraine’s state energy company that blew a hole in Zelenskyy’s inner circle.
The probe has touched other Zelenskyy associates — entrepreneur Timur Mindich and Oleksiy Chernyshov, Ukraine’s former deputy prime minister. Both were also charged with corruption but denied the allegations last year. Mindich fled to Israel the day before he was supposed to be arrested.
As the probe snowballed, Zelenskyy fired Yermak, his longtime friend and aide, on the same day corruption-busters searched the adviser’s office. According to NABU, the members of the alleged crime group laundered state funds, including from Energoatom, through luxury real estate investments.
If Yermak posts bail, he must regularly present himself for questioning at NABU, inform detectives about his whereabouts, not leave Kyiv without the investigators’ permission, submit his passports to the authorities and wear an electronic bracelet, the anti-corruption court ruled Thursday.
Zelenskyy’s office said this week it would not issue any comments on the Yermak trial, as the investigation is still ongoing.
