Operation Midas: five detained, seven served notices of suspicion

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) has detained five people and notified seven people of suspicion, including a businessman alleged to be the leader of the criminal organisation, a former adviser to the energy minister, and the executive director for physical protection and security at Energoatom, Ukraine's nuclear power company.

Source: NABU

Quote: "NABU and SAPO [the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office] have uncovered and documented the activities of a criminal organisation involving serving and former officials from Ukraine's energy sector, a businessman well known in the media, and other individuals. Its members built a large-scale corruption scheme in order to exert influence over strategic state-sector companies, including Energoatom.

Five people have now been detained under Article 208 of Ukraine's Code of Criminal Procedure (lawful apprehension by a competent official) and seven members have been served with notices of suspicion."

Details: These individuals include the businessman alleged to be the ringleader, Energoatom's executive director for physical protection and security, and a former adviser to the energy minister. Four other suspects are described as back-office operatives who laundered funds.

The group's main activity was to extract unlawful gains from Energoatom contractors amounting to 10-15% of the value of contracts, NABU reports.

Contractors were allegedly forced to pay kickbacks to avoid payments for goods or services supplied being blocked or losing their supplier status – a practice the conspirators called the "tollgate".

Quote: "The money was laundered through a back office in central Kyiv. About US$100 million passed through it."

More details: For the services it provided to those outside the criminal organisation, the office took a percentage of the amounts processed.

The special operation to document the group's activities has been going on for more than 15 months – since summer 2024. The investigators have compiled a massive body of data and thousands of hours of audio recordings. NABU and SAPO are assessing the actions of everyone featured in these files.

The entire staff of NABU has been involved in the investigation's final phase. More than 70 searches have been carried out in Kyiv and other regions, with a significant haul of documents and cash seized.

Background:

• NABU's investigation indicates that tens of millions of dollars from Energoatom were laundered under the cover of complicit officials.
• The alleged scheme was crude: businesses that wanted to sell goods or services to Energoatom had to pay a 10-15% kickback or face non-payment and removal from the supplier list – a mechanism dubbed the "tollgate", since you either share your margin or you are left standing at closed doors.
• The ringleader is alleged to be Tymur Mindich (known as "Karlson" in the NABU files), a businessman, former associate of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and co-owner of Kvartal 95, the Ukrainian TV production company that Zelenskyy founded before he became president. Mindich left Ukraine just hours before the NABU search began.
• The home of former energy minister Herman Halushchenko ("Professor" or "Hera" on the tapes) was also searched on 10 November. Sources say that Halushchenko is still an influential figure in the sector through the current energy minister, Svitlana Hrynchuk, and various managers that he installed prior to his dismissal in July 2025.

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