Ukraine’s former deputy PM arrested in energy sector corruption case

The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine has remanded the country’s former deputy prime minister in custody for 60 days, having charged him with illicit enrichment, Ukrainian independent news outlet Hromadske reported on Tuesday. 

Oleksiy Chernyshov, who served as deputy prime minister from December to July and has held multiple senior government roles since 2019, was remanded in custody in connection with a corruption scheme involving the state nuclear power company Energoatom, with the alternative of posting bail totalling 51.6 million hryvnias (€1 million). 

The bail matched the figure Chernyshov allegedly received from the scheme revealed by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) last week, in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s close associate and former business partner, Timur Mindich, is accused of being the ringleader. According to NABU, the scheme saw many high-level officials receive kickbacks totalling $100 million (€86 million) through contracts signed by Energoatom.

Working with court materials supplied by NABU, the investigative journalists at Bihus, which looks into corruption cases, linked Chernyshov’s role in the operation to the construction of luxury properties in Kozyn, a suburb of Kyiv, alleging that the estates were intended for him, Mindich, and the country’s leadership.

Chernyshov was implicated in a separate corruption scheme involving a Kyiv property developer while still in office in June, with his naming by NABU making him the highest-ranking serving official to face such charges at the time.