Ukraine has detained a former energy minister as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe that has touched Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inner circle while Russia hammers Kyiv’s energy sector with persistent strikes.
Detectives with Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) took the former government official into custody while he was attempting to cross the country’s border on Sunday, the agency said in a statement.
Ukrainian media named the minister as Herman Halushchenko, Ukraine’s ex-energy and justice minister who stood down in November 2025 along with another prominent minister after Zelensky publicly called for their resignations.
Halushchenko had been suspended by the government days earlier, but vowed to defend himself in court.
The resignations were part of the fallout from a long-running investigation by independent Ukrainian anti-corruption officials into an alleged $100-million kickback scheme embroiling the country’s nuclear power sector.
As part of an effort dubbed “Operation Midas,” NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) said in November they had uncovered a “criminal organization” that allegedly developed “a large-scale corruption scheme” to launder money and obtain unlawful benefits, including from Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power operator, Energoatom.
Current and former officials, as well as prominent businesspeople, are part of this network designed to profit from kickbacks of up to 15 percent on contracts, the agencies said at the time.
NABU said it had collected thousands of hours of audio recordings in its hunt for insiders from summer 2024.
Newsweek has contacted NABU and SAPO via email for further comment. Timur Mindich, a business tycoon with longstanding ties to Zelensky, is accused of heading up the alleged scheme.
The president’s powerful former chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, resigned in late November after an anti-corruption raid on his Kyiv residence but denied any wrongdoing.
The highly publicized investigation has been hailed by some as showing a genuine push within Ukraine to shed its historic association with corruption, marking a step forward toward integrating with the European Union.
Others express concern the spotlight shone on top-level corruption could jeopardize support for the country exhausted by nearly four years of long, brutal war with Russia and still heavily dependent on external backing.
has pummeled Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, plunging swathes of the country into darkness for hours at a time and cut off access to heating during some of the coldest months of the year.
The targeted assaults on energy facilities in Ukraine have heightened attention to the energy sector and those responsible for managing it.
NABU director Semen Kryvonos said this month that the agency was working in 10 different countries, including some members of the European Union, to collect information on financial transactions and assets, according to Ukraine’s Ukrinform news agency.
(Miami Herald)
