Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff appears in court on charges of embezzlement Corruption Issues

A former top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has appeared in court as prosecutors seek his arrest on charges of involvement in a conspiracy to embezzle money from the media.

Prosecutors say Yermak, 54, spent about 460 million Ukrainian hryvnias ($10.5m) on luxury Dynasty apartments in Kozyn, near Kyiv.

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Investigators suspect that the money used for the development may have come from corruption at Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned energy company.

The prosecutor has asked the court to keep Yermak in prison, with a bail of 180 million hryvnias ($4m).

Yermak denied the allegations.

The trial is due to resume on Wednesday.

“The suspicious information has no basis,” Yermak wrote on the Telegraph following Tuesday. “As a lawyer who has been serving for more than 30 years, I have always been guided by the law.

Earlier, during a break, he told reporters: “I have only one house and one car.

The case is part of the anti-corruption operation, which is called “Midas”, led by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). The operation was revealed last November, when Timur Mindich, a former business partner of Zelenskyy, was accused of organizing a $100m conspiracy in Energaotom.

Mindich, who denies the allegations, has fled to Israel.

Prosecutors say Mindich and several other officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Chernyshov, are “complicit” in the Dynasty scandal.

He added that Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and a key negotiator in the US-led peace process with Russia, was also questioned and is a witness in the case.

Corruption scandal

Yermak, a one-time filmmaker who helped engineer Zelenskyy from playing a fictional president on television to lead a country at war, resigned in November after investigators raided his home as part of the Energoatom probe.

NABU head Semen Kryvonos confirmed on Tuesday that Zelenskyy himself was not the subject of any investigation.

A permanent president cannot be formally investigated.

Zelenskyy has not publicly responded to the reasons he has previously responded to. A communications adviser said Monday it was too early to rule out the situation.

The latest cases come as Ukraine remains dependent on Western financial aid, depending on anticorruption reforms. US-backed peace efforts have stalled in the fifth year of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian government last year tried to take away the independence of NABU and SAPO, which were established after the 2014 pro-democracy uprising.

The move sparked anti-government protests during the war and forced Zelenskyy to reverse the decision after opposition from the European Union, Kyiv’s main economic and military supporter.

Some lawmakers, including members of ⁠Zelenskyy’s Governing Servant of the People party, saw a silver lining in the case against Yermak, saying it was an encouraging sign of Ukraine’s commitment to fighting corruption.

“Partners see that Ukraine has an independent anti-corruption system that is doing its job,” said Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Zelenskyy’s approval rating has remained stable in recent months, despite rising concerns about corruption, with nearly 58 percent of Ukrainians trusting the president, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology said on May 4.

However, in a May 6 survey, they found that 54 percent believe that corruption is more dangerous to the development of Ukraine than the Russian war, given a choice between the two.