Ukraine’s Operation Midas Concludes as Anti-Graft Investigators Say $125 Million Was Embezzled From the Energy Sector

Introduction

Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies have closed the investigative phase of the biggest graft case of the war, and the numbers they have put on the record are stark. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, known as NABU, and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, known as SAPO, announced this week that the pre-trial investigation into a scheme centred on the state nuclear energy company Energoatom has been completed after two years of work. In their statement, the two agencies said a high-level criminal organisation built a large-scale corruption scheme and embezzled 111 million dollars and 12 million euros between 2020 and 2025, a combined sum investigators and Ukrainian media have put at roughly 125 million dollars. The announcement closes one chapter of a scandal that has already cost ministers their jobs, driven a presidential associate into exile and shaken confidence in wartime Kyiv, while leaving the largest questions — who will stand trial, who will be extradited and how much money can be recovered — still unanswered. This is the story of Ukraine Operation Midas corruption Energoatom November 2026.

The case, codenamed Operation Midas, first burst into public view in November 2025, when NABU officers raided Energoatom facilities and the homes of senior officials and businessmen. It has since grown into the most consequential corruption investigation of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s time in office, touching his inner circle, his former chief of staff and two of his energy ministers. The agencies say they have now taken measures to seize the assets of the criminal organisation both in Ukraine and abroad, and that work to identify and seize illegal assets is continuing. What follows is an account of what the investigators say they found, how the scheme is alleged to have worked, who has been named, and what remains unproven as the case moves toward the courts.

1. What the investigators say they found

The joint statement from NABU and SAPO, published on Wednesday, presents the investigation as a finished piece of work rather than an opening move. The agencies said the probe, which they describe as lasting two years, established that a high-level criminal organisation managed to build a large-scale corruption scheme inside Ukraine’s energy sector and to embezzle 111 million dollars and 12 million euros over a five-year period running from 2020 to 2025. The figures have been reported by Ukrainian and international media as roughly 125 million dollars in total, a sum that makes the case the largest corruption scandal of the war years. The agencies also said they had taken steps to seize the organisation’s assets in Ukraine and abroad, and that efforts to find and seize further illegal assets are still under way.

1.1 The sums at the centre of the case

The headline figure is built from two currencies, and the split matters because it reflects how the money is said to have moved. Investigators put the dollar amount at 111 million and the euro amount at 12 million, covering the period from 2020 to 2025. Ukrainian media have described the total as about 125 million dollars, while other reports at different stages of the case have put the alleged kickback total at around 100 million dollars, a difference that reflects the way estimates have shifted as the investigation developed and as different counts of contracts and payments have been published. The agencies’ own statement is the authoritative figure for the completed investigation, and it is the number the prosecution is expected to carry into court. The sums are said to have come from contracts at Energoatom, the state-owned company that operates Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and sits at the heart of the country’s energy system.

1.2 How the scheme is said to have worked

According to the investigators, the scheme was straightforward in design and sophisticated in execution. Officials and their associates are accused of demanding kickbacks of up to 15 per cent from private contractors working for Energoatom, with some reports putting the demanded share at between 10 and 15 per cent of contract values. Companies that wanted Energoatom business are said to have been forced to pay, and the proceeds were then channelled through a specially established office in Kyiv and a network of shell companies abroad and offshore accounts. NABU has described the Kyiv office as a back office for the laundering operation, a place where cash and paperwork were handled away from the company’s formal systems. The use of offshore structures and foreign shell companies is the element that has made asset recovery a cross-border task, and it is why the agencies say seizures are being pursued both inside Ukraine and overseas.

2. How Operation Midas began

The scandal did not arrive gradually. It arrived in a single morning of raids in November 2025, when NABU officers moved simultaneously against Energoatom facilities and the homes of senior officials and businessmen. The operation was the public debut of a probe that had already been running quietly, and its scale — the targets, the addresses, the seniority of the people searched — made it immediately clear that this was not a routine inquiry into a single contract. Within days, the case had claimed its first political casualties, and the name Operation Midas had entered Ukraine’s political vocabulary as shorthand for corruption at the top of the wartime state.

2.1 The November 2025 raids

The raids of November 2025 targeted the core of the alleged network. NABU searched Energoatom’s offices and the homes of several senior officials and businessmen, among them German Galushchenko, who was then the justice minister, and Timur Mindich, a longtime friend and financial backer of President Zelensky. Mindich, a co-owner of Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 production company, had been described in Ukrainian media as the president’s personal wallet, a label that ensured the raids would be read as a strike at the president’s inner circle rather than at a state company alone. Five suspects were detained when the scandal first erupted, and several of them were subsequently released on bail. The raids also produced recordings and documents that would later surface in public reporting, including material that became known as the Mindich tapes.

2.2 The first resignations and arrests

The political fallout was immediate. Galushchenko and the then energy minister, Svetlana Grinchuk, were forced to resign in the immediate aftermath of the scandal in November 2025. Galushchenko was later arrested in February 2026 while attempting to leave Ukraine, according to prosecutors, and a former energy minister who served from 2021 to 2025 was detained as a suspect in the same case on charges including money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation. Former deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov was placed in pre-trial detention with a bail option, and Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court later set his bail at 51 million hryvnias, about 1.21 million dollars. The resignations and arrests signalled that the case would not be contained inside Energoatom, and they set the pattern for everything that followed: each new development in the investigation produced a new political consequence.

3. The people named in the case

About a dozen people have been named as the primary suspects in the case, according to Ukrainian media, and the list reads like a map of the networks that have surrounded the presidency since 2019. It includes ministers, a former deputy prime minister, Energoatom executives, advisers, accountants and fixers, alongside the businessman at the centre of the allegations. Some are in custody or on bail in Ukraine. Two of the most important figures, Mindich and his associate Aleksandr Zuckerman, are reported to have fled to Israel and remain wanted by the Ukrainian authorities. The question of whether they will ever face a Ukrainian court is one of the open threads of the case.

3.1 Timur Mindich and the “wallet” label

Mindich is the figure around whom the case turns. A longtime friend and financial backer of Zelensky and a co-owner of the Kvartal 95 production company, he was openly called the Ukrainian leader’s wallet in Ukrainian media long before the raids. Investigators accuse him of masterminding a network that siphoned 10 to 15 per cent from critical infrastructure contracts, with proceeds laundered through luxury real estate and offshore structures. He fled Ukraine shortly before NABU charged him with money laundering and organised crime in November 2025, and Zelensky subsequently sanctioned him. Mindich has also been linked in reporting to Fire Point, a Ukrainian defence contractor that Zelensky himself had promoted abroad as a manufacturer of advanced weaponry. A permanent advisory board has urged the defence ministry to cut all ties with the company, according to reporting on the case. Mindich denies wrongdoing through his representatives, and he has not been convicted of any offence.

3.2 The ministers and officials caught in the fallout

The ministerial casualties extend beyond Galushchenko and Grinchuk. Chernyshov, the former deputy prime minister, faces illicit enrichment charges and was jailed by the High Anti-Corruption Court with bail set at 51 million hryvnias. Dmytro Basov, an Energoatom executive, Ihor Myroniuk, a former energy adviser, Ihor Fursenko, described as a back-office accountant, and alleged fixers Lesia Ustymenko and Lyudmyla Zorina also received multi-million-hryvnia bail, according to reporting on the court proceedings. Andriy Yermak, once Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff, resigned after NABU searches connected to the wider fallout and later received a notice of suspicion in a related money-laundering case in May 2026. All three of the most senior figures named — Galushchenko, Chernyshov and Yermak — have denied wrongdoing. The breadth of the list is itself a measure of the case: it reaches from the contracting offices of a state energy company into the presidential administration.

4. Energoatom and the kickback machine

Energoatom is not a marginal state company. It operates Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, generates a large share of the country’s electricity and spends heavily on maintenance, equipment and construction, including work that has become more urgent as Russian strikes have battered the energy grid. That combination — large budgets, urgent wartime procurement and a monopoly position — is what investigators say made it an attractive target. The scheme they describe turned the company’s contracting process into a toll booth: suppliers paid to play, and the payments were skimmed before the work was done.

4.1 Contracts, contractors and the 15 per cent demand

The core allegation is that officials demanded kickbacks of up to 15 per cent from private contractors, with the range reported as 10 to 15 per cent depending on the contract. The demand is said to have been systematic rather than occasional, applied across contracts over a period of years and enforced by the officials who controlled access to Energoatom’s procurement. Contractors who refused risked losing the work; contractors who paid passed the cost on, either through inflated prices or reduced margins, with the state and ultimately the public bearing the loss. NABU has described the arrangement as a large-scale corruption scheme built by a high-level criminal organisation, language that signals the prosecution’s intention to present the case as organised crime rather than a series of isolated bribes.

4.2 The Kyiv office and the offshore trail

The money, according to investigators, did not stay in Kyiv. It was laundered through a specially established office in the capital and a network of shell companies abroad and offshore accounts, a structure designed to separate the cash from its source and to move it beyond the reach of Ukrainian law enforcement. The Kyiv office handled the domestic end of the operation, while the offshore network provided the exit route. That structure is now the focus of the asset-recovery effort: NABU and SAPO say they have taken measures to seize the organisation’s assets both in Ukraine and abroad, and that efforts to identify and seize illegal assets are continuing. The offshore trail also explains why the investigation took two years. Tracing money through shell companies and foreign accounts requires requests to foreign authorities, bank records and corporate registries, and each step takes time.

5. The bail money question

One of the strangest subplots of the case concerns the money paid to free its own suspects. When the first five suspects were detained in November 2025, several were released on bail set in the tens of millions of hryvnias. The question of who paid that bail, and with what money, has become a second investigation in its own right, and it has produced one of the most striking details of the whole affair: a small Kyiv furniture company with almost no capital paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to free people accused of laundering tens of millions.

5.1 Tens of millions of hryvnias from unclear sources

NABU is examining who paid tens of millions of hryvnias in bail for five suspects in the case, and whether any of the money came from the same back office that allegedly laundered kickbacks skimmed from Energoatom’s contracts. The figures are substantial. Chernyshov’s bail was set at 51 million hryvnias, about 1.21 million dollars. A company called LLC Vangar, a Kyiv furniture business with a statutory capital of just 1,000 hryvnias, about 24 dollars, created in May 2025, is reported to have paid 25 million hryvnias, about 591,000 dollars, in bail for back-office accountant Lesia Ustymenko and a further 12 million hryvnias, about 284,000 dollars, for businesswoman Lyudmyla Zorina. Other suspects, including Basov, Myroniuk, Fursenko and Zorina, also received multi-million-hryvnia bail. The mismatch between the payers’ apparent means and the sums they produced is what has drawn the investigators’ attention.

5.2 What the financial monitors can and cannot do

The bail inquiry has exposed the limits of Ukraine’s financial monitoring system as well as its reach. From November 13 to 28, NABU sent a series of requests to the State Financial Monitoring Service asking it to trace the source of the bail funds. The service’s head, Filyp Pronin, has said his agency answered the requests and continues to work on the case, but cannot block transactions on its own and is still receiving information from the banks that processed the payments, a process he described as taking time rather than a sign of inaction. Speaking on December 10 to a parliamentary commission, NABU director Semen Kryvonos said the public had been concerned about the origins of the bail money. The exchange captures a tension at the heart of the case: the investigators can follow the money, but the machinery for stopping it moves slowly, and the institutions involved are still assembling the picture.

6. The political fallout in Kyiv

No corruption case in wartime Ukraine is only a legal matter, and Operation Midas has been political from the day of the raids. It struck at a moment when Zelensky’s government was asking Western partners for continued military and financial support and preparing the ground for eventual EU membership, and it handed critics — in Kyiv, in Moscow and in Western capitals — a ready-made argument that the wartime state could not be trusted with the money it was being given. Zelensky’s response has been to back the investigation publicly, order resignations and sanction Mindich, a stance that has insulated him personally so far but has not ended the questions.

6.1 Zelensky’s position and the chief of staff’s exit

The most sensitive political casualty was Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s chief of staff and one of the most powerful figures in the country. Yermak resigned after NABU searches connected to the fallout from the case, and in May 2026 he received a notice of suspicion in a related money-laundering case. Leaked recordings known as the Mindich tapes, which are reported to reference a figure called Vova in property discussions, have amplified scrutiny of the president’s circle, although no formal evidence has directly implicated the president himself. Zelensky has backed the probes, ordered resignations and sanctioned Mindich, and his supporters argue that the fact the investigation reached his own associates is evidence the anti-corruption institutions are working. His critics argue the opposite: that the scandal proves the system around him was rotten and that his backing came only after the investigators acted.

6.2 What the scandal means for wartime trust

The deeper damage is to trust. Ukraine’s war effort depends on public confidence that sacrifice is shared and that public money is spent on defence rather than diverted, and a scheme that allegedly skimmed up to 15 per cent from energy contracts strikes directly at that confidence. The timing compounded the harm: the raids came as the country was heading into another winter of Russian attacks on the power grid, when Energoatom’s plants were more important than ever. The case has also become a test of whether the anti-corruption bodies created after 2014 — NABU, SAPO and the High Anti-Corruption Court — can hold senior figures to account in wartime. Their completion of the pre-trial investigation is, on that measure, a success. Whether the courts convict is the test that remains.

7. The international stakes

The case has been watched closely outside Ukraine for reasons that go beyond the sums involved. Kyiv’s Western partners have made anti-corruption reform a condition of continued support and of progress toward EU membership, and the Midas investigation has been treated in Brussels and Washington as evidence of how seriously Ukraine takes that condition. At the same time, the scandal has been seized on by Russia, whose state media have presented it as proof of rot at the top of the Ukrainian state. The international dimension is therefore double-edged: the investigation demonstrates that Ukraine’s institutions can act against powerful people, and the scandal itself demonstrates why those institutions were needed.

7.1 Western partners, aid and EU accession

Western backing for Ukraine has always come with conditions, and the fight against corruption is among the most explicit. The European Union has tied accession progress to judicial and anti-corruption reform, and the United States and other donors have pressed Kyiv to show that aid money is protected. Operation Midas sits squarely in that frame: a case in which the alleged theft came from a state energy company whose revenues and contracts are part of the wartime economy that Western money supports. The completion of the investigation gives Kyiv something to point to — a completed probe, named suspects, seized assets — but it also keeps the scandal in the news at a moment when Ukraine is asking for more support, and when donor fatigue is a real political factor in several capitals.

7.2 The Fire Point connection and defence contracts

The most troubling international thread is the reported link between Mindich and Fire Point, a Ukrainian defence contractor that Zelensky had personally promoted abroad as a manufacturer of advanced weaponry. Reporting on the case says Mindich had been secretly running the company, and a permanent advisory board has urged the defence ministry to cut all ties with it. If the link is established in court, it would mean that the network accused of skimming energy contracts also had a hand in the defence sector, where the stakes — the weapons Ukraine’s soldiers depend on — are higher still. The defence ministry has not been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Fire Point, and the company’s status and contracts remain subjects of reporting rather than court findings. But the connection is one reason the case continues to draw attention well beyond the energy sector.

8. What happens next

With the pre-trial investigation complete, the case now moves toward the courts, and the timetable shifts from the investigators to the prosecutors and judges. SAPO will prepare the indictment, the High Anti-Corruption Court will hear the case, and the suspects who are in Ukraine will face trial while those who fled — Mindich and Zuckerman in Israel — remain the subject of extradition efforts whose outcome is far from certain. The asset seizures announced by NABU and SAPO will also be tested, as the defence challenges them and foreign courts are asked to recognise them. The coming weeks will provide the answers.

8.1 The road to trial

The next formal step is the indictment, in which SAPO will set out the charges against each suspect and the evidence said to support them. The trial itself is likely to be long: a case spanning five years, dozens of contracts, offshore structures and more than a dozen suspects will take months to hear, and the defence is expected to challenge both the evidence and the seizures. The bail money inquiry is running in parallel and could produce further charges if investigators establish that the funds used to free suspects came from the same laundering network. For the suspects in custody or on bail in Ukraine, the trial will be the moment the allegations are tested in open court. For Mindich and Zuckerman, the question is whether Israel will extradite them, a process that depends on treaties, the charges as framed and the political will on both sides.

8.2 What to watch next

Several markers will show where the case is heading. The first is the indictment itself: its scope, its charges and whether it names anyone beyond the dozen primary suspects already identified. The second is the extradition question, and whether Kyiv makes a formal request for Mindich and Zuckerman and how Israel responds. The third is the asset-recovery effort, and whether the seizures announced this week survive legal challenge and produce money returned to the state. The fourth is the political calendar: whether the trial produces further revelations about the president’s circle, and whether Zelensky’s public backing of the investigation holds as the case reaches the courtroom. And the fifth is the bail money inquiry, which could yet widen the case if the funds are traced back to the back office. Each of these will be reported as it develops, and each will shape how Operation Midas is remembered — as the moment Ukraine’s anti-corruption institutions proved themselves, or as another scandal that ended in acquittals and exile.

The coming weeks will provide the answers.

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