Operation Midas: How Absolute Power Was Built, One Dollar at a Time

History lays out its own strict logic. The protective goggles of Europeans, cheerfully reporting on the successes of our reforms, have been smashed to pieces.

The reasons behind the Presidential Office’s actions toward NABU and SAPO this summer are obvious: the NABU–SAPO operation Midas (with eight suspects already served notices of suspicion, including the president’s friend Tymur Mindich and the president’s crony Oleksii Chernyshov, former minister and CEO of Naftogaz) slit open the belly of the current administration. This investigation was meant to be buried. Blitzkrieg-style. Forever. That is why the Presidential Office and its security structures behaved so brazenly. But for the same reason, the heads of NABU and SAPO were just as tense and unyielding. They knew what they were standing for. And what they had in their hands.

What next? Where are we steering our country? Russian Telegram channels are jubilant, thanking the Ukrainian authorities for their help and promising indulgences in the event of occupation, claiming that we “played right into their hands.” Traitor and State Duma “senator” Andrii Derkach—in whose apartment on Volodymyrska Street in Kyiv, five buildings away from the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), the corrupt back office from Energoatom operated—can only be disappointed that the tap of income has been shut off. Income ensured by Ukrainian authorities. What a shock.

It is understandable that a society suffering from acute pain feels disgusted and terrified looking at the spilled entrails of a rotten system that was supposed to serve it. Moreover, this spectacle will irritate any European who has been voting for four years to provide financial support to our country in its war with Russia. To turn away and pinch one’s nose is an absolutely natural reaction. At first glance. Because, on second thought, what is happening in wartime Ukraine today is not only about a state soaked through with corruption and an absolute power that thinks it has caught God by the beard, profiting from its citizens’ misery. It is also about the healthy forces and systems that, on the frontlines and in the rear, are holding the country together. It was their unifying energy—not just the slogan “Zelensky is here. Yermak is here…”—that saved us in the early days of the full-scale invasion. It is this energy that now sustains the Spirit of Ukraine in what is perhaps one of the most critical moments for preserving our statehood.

A torrent of information collapsing upon the public leaves it in a stupor. NABU continues publishing transcripts on its channel—recordings obtained from the so-called “Mindich tapes.” Conversations between Andrii Derkach’s longtime aide, former energy ministry advisor Ihor Myroniuk (“Rocket”), who had passed an SSU security check, and Energoatom’s Executive Director for Security Dmytro Basov (“Tenor”), reveal how cynically the informal overseers milked Energoatom’s supplier companies. According to the investigation, during the surveillance period alone, over $100 million passed through the back office. Just to help us get through the winter of war.

In another episode, Mindich (also known as “Carlson”) whispers to the “laundry’s” accountant Oleksandr Zuckerman (“Sugarman”) about the sums to be given to “Che Guevara” (Chernyshov) to continue construction (referring to four high-end cottages in Kozyn). According to another of the president’s friend’s interlocutors, “so much soul has been invested” into that construction that “we don’t want to mothball it for an entire year!” The puzzle of this cynical feast in time of plague assembles with astonishing speed. And Mindich is already arranging a conversation between former energy minister Halushchenko and the president, instructing the “dear” top official on exactly what to say to please the head of state and keep his position: “I am entirely yours; I will do everything you tell me.”

The High Anti-Corruption Court is considering preventive measures for the detainees. One by one, the suspects are sent to pretrial detention with bail amounts ranging from 25 to 120 million hryvnias. Prosecutors name new ministers allegedly influenced by the president’s trusted confidant, Mindich. Former defense minister Umerov, mentioned in the tapes, immediately denies any such pressure publicly, which was instantly countered by the Ministry’s Public Anti-Corruption Council: “We did not allow the purchase of bulletproof vests from Mindich’s company.” The published transcript, in which Umerov promises Mindich “to do everything properly” for Milicon UA LLC, confirms their statement…
Surreal? No, reality.

Where else will these thousand hours of recordings lead the country? What abscesses will they open? For according to our information, the Energoatom case is based on only 20 percent of the material recorded by NABU at multiple locations. Other cases—military, medical and horrific procurement schemes across numerous sectors—are still awaiting their turn.

The answers to these questions will ultimately come from the investigation and the High Anti-Corruption Court. But that will take time. Meanwhile, some urgent questions deserve answers right now.

Why is the main figure in the investigation—the president’s friend Tymur Mindich—meeting the Zuckerman brothers in Tel Aviv instead of sitting in the dock at the High Anti-Corruption Court? Was there a leak? What role could Deputy Head of SAPO Andrii Syniuk have played? What other spheres of government were influenced by Mindich? What—and who—may stop the investigation? And most importantly, what does the president and the country have to do?

Mindich’s getaway

Even sworn opponents of NABU within the security services call Operation Midas brilliant. But it has two problems: Mindich and the leaks. Why did Tymur Mindich—a citizen of a foreign state, a carrier of an enormous volume of information, whose apartment served as a meeting point for everyone with everyone: ministers, vice prime ministers, heads of back offices, owners of “laundries,” and Andrii Yermak—manage to leave the country four hours before the searches and arrests began? Where was operational support? Why wasn’t it red-flagged by the border guard service, whose leadership, after some hesitation, acknowledged that they had released a father of many children legally? And why didn’t NABU apprehend Mindich earlier, when he quietly visited Kyiv in early October?

The heads of NABU and SAPO remain silent. But conversations with well-informed sources reveal how they see the situation.

First, red-flagging by the State Border Guard Service essentially reveals law enforcement interest in a person. In such cases, the information immediately lands at the SSU—something the detectives could not allow. NABU had no confirmed data that Mindich was preparing to leave or that he knew about the planned searches. Suspicion of a leak appeared only during the searches, after the seizure of devices and documents. According to other accounts, after October 26, the suspects indeed behaved differently, showing indirect signs of awareness. This, incidentally, allowed them to remove significant amounts of cash from NABU’s sight: detectives estimated that the searches should have yielded up to $30 million, but many safes were empty…

Second, the detectives did not know Mindich’s exact location: he kept changing cars and apartments (several addresses were prepared for searches, and not all of them were at 9a Hrushevskyi Street). Add to that NABU’s lack of direct access to geolocation and telephone tapping: the SSU, despite the law, never granted such technical capabilities to the Bureau.

Third, an actual travel ban can only be imposed after serving a notice of suspicion.

“But surely you don’t believe that such a little thing as a red flag in the system would stop anyone?” smirks our source. “Covering for ‘their own’ in the system has nothing to do with the law.” The operation was planned for 6 a.m. Monday; seventy searches were to be conducted at once. Bursting in at night is prohibited, except in extraordinary cases with a court warrant. And issuing a suspicion before a search is legally possible, but typically comes after a search and detention. “To toss a suspicion at Mindich alone in the middle of the night, without a search, not knowing where he is—that would have been stupid. The others would then have to be hunted down who-knows-where,” the source explains.

As for Mindich’s October visit, NABU was not ready to launch the operation at that moment. Mindich himself knew this, telling those close to him that “he tapes contain things that are compromising but do not entail criminal liability.” The investigation was conducted in an accelerated mode, and the texts of suspicions were drafted literally “on the fly.”

Perhaps by fleeing to Israel, Tymur Mindich made a major mistake. Ukraine is unlikely to have him extradited. But the FBI could extract him from Israel and take him to the United States as easily as picking a piece of meat from between their teeth after lunch. Let us not forget that the FBI—now joined by US prosecutors—is collecting data on schemes and volumes of money siphoned out of Ukraine by the country’s ruling elite. People who saw the analytical materials on schemes and crypto transfers went grey during their review. We are talking about tens of billions of dollars.

Tymur Mindich is not the only officer in this corrupt army. But he is the owner of the platform where meetings took place, discussions were held and decisions were made.
Getting such a valuable source and making him talk in no time would be a great success not only for American investigators but also for American leadership, which could use such an effective lever of pressure on Ukrainian authorities in negotiations about the terms of ending the war…

During the July crisis, when the topic of the “Mindich tapes” first surfaced, NABU sources categorically denied any intentional leak of the crucial information; publications forced them to remove surveillance equipment from the apartment. The Bureau already had a large amount of data and no interest whatsoever in disclosing it. Nevertheless, the option of publicly revealing the Mindich case was considered as a form of public defense against the Presidential Office’s attack on NABU. But despite enormous pressure from the authorities, the anti-corruption agencies decided to complete all operational activities first and only then finalize the investigation and bring the case to court.

Therefore, the “war of the security forces,” which pro-government media and sharp-tongued “political analysts” described throughout this period, was in reality a one-sided pressure campaign by the Presidential Office against anti-corruption institutions, intended to break their will and disorient their teams. The detention at the SSU’s pretrial center—on trumped-up charges—of Ruslan Mahamedrasulov (a detective officially involved in operational actions in the Mindich case) and his elderly father is one instrument of pressure that remains in effect to this day.

The Syniuk factor

After placing second in the competition for Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, Andrii Syniuk was appointed First Deputy to Oleksandr Klymenko by the Prosecutor General. Since then, a “trail” has followed him—from the Presidential Office and Oleh Tatarov. On Monday, this trail became visible: Mykhailo Tkach’s report showed Syniuk’s informal meetings, including with Kharkiv lawyer Oleksii Menev, who lives in the same building as Mindich. “How elegantly they sidelined Syniuk in case the Presidential Office strikes Klymenko again—so they can move the First Deputy into the role of acting head,” we thought. But that is not necessarily the case.

According to our information, Menev truly does visit his family in that building, and the contents of the “blue folder” that Syniuk was handing to another counterpart around the corner might have been a routine work matter unrelated to the Mindich case—and known to SAPO’s leadership. Why, then, launch an internal investigation?

There are two versions. The first comes down to discrepancies in the internal IT system of the anti-corruption agencies, where an experienced prosecutor could have found a loophole to obtain information that should have been inaccessible to him. This is what is being examined now. The second is the very logistics of large-scale operations: a few days prior, court orders are entered into the Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations, information flows to the Bar self-governance bodies (Izovitova and Borzykh, both long associated with Tatarov, if you get my drift), and rumors already circulate around the district that 140 witnesses are being sought for conducting searches. One must be incredibly naïve not to understand: something large is being prepared — and to guess who it may affect.

After Midas, the anti-corruption agencies will have to do more than simply report on the operations carried out; they will have to operate on themselves. Including by modernizing their internal electronic system and proposing legislative changes.

Corruption hotspots and Fire Point

“Everything we are learning now within the Energoatom investigation amounts to roughly 20% of the information from NABU’s operational recordings,” says a well-informed law enforcement officer. Many suspects with code names have yet to be matched to their real identities; and even those whose identities are known have not yet been served with suspicions. Whereas Chernyshov came for the cash personally (after his interview as minister about “caring for IDPs,” it is sickening to hear his voice on the tapes begging Mindich for money for four estates in the Dynasty cooperative), in the case of some suspects, no direct cash contact has yet been recorded. Yet. The documents and devices seized during the searches may bring detectives many more revelations.

Beyond Energoatom, the investigation uncovered abuses in other sectors of the economy and security in which Mindich and Co. were empowered to operate. NABU is extremely cautious with the defense sector: it concerns not only procurement from affiliated companies (with much still to be unearthed) but also production by them. The favorite is Fire Point, whose chief designer Denys Shtilerman claims that “Tymur Mindich has nothing to do with the company.” Although, he says, “he wanted to.”

But who could have known that after Shtilerman spoke to our outlet, things would explode like this — with Ihor Fursenko (‘Reshik’), a suspect in the Energoatom kickback schemes, suddenly telling the High Anti-Corruption Court that he had been hired as an administrator at Fire Point, the producer of Flamingo rockets? (This ensured his deferral from mobilization and permission to travel abroad.) Of course, the testimony of a “laundry” administrator is far from all that investigators have. According to our interlocutors, Mindich is directly connected to the company, which he co-owns with several people close to the authorities. The source did not specify whether any ‘safe agreements’ are registered in the name of Mindich, Kamyshin, Yermak or all of them collectively, with Ihor ‘Shmel’ Khmelev (Mindich’s longtime business partner) fronting them.

“The thing is, it’s actually a good company. It has high-quality, efficient drones and excellent service, better than most manufacturers,” says a law enforcement source. So what’s the problem? “The problem is that you’d have to try really hard not to become a top-tier company when you have such protection and multi-billion financing,” he explains. Once the surveillance data is fully analyzed, the investigation into the company promises many surprises. Let us hope the investigators will be interested not so much in product quality or perfect conditions as in whether procurement prices were justified and whether money was siphoned out of the company.

In fact, this case reveals something more than Mindich and Co. using the ‘laundry’ to secure themselves a future in the highly profitable arms business. It is also about how the authorities crush everyone who gets in their way. Shortly before Operation Midas, the country watched the story of Yurii Kasianov, whose drone-production unit within the State Border Guard Service was suddenly dismantled. He is a witness in the Fire Point case at NABU and a complainant about violations within the Border Guard Service itself—which also produces drones. That is another topic. But the logic is the same: everything for their own people, and a criminal case with absurd charges for anyone outside the circle. So they don’t talk too much.

Investigation problems

Already by Monday afternoon, while the country’s top officials were still trying to digest what had happened, their advisers and assistants had switched into crisis-management mode: the familiar, hand-operated Telegram garbage dumps began churning out messages claiming that NABU was pursuing a case that “will never end,” and that “a thousand hours of recordings have been clumsily fabricated.”

We should note, however, that there are genuine risks to the investigation’s effectiveness—risks the detectives are likely to encounter in practice.

First, the deadlines. NABU has 12 months for the pretrial investigation. Now the main investigative work begins. Everything that operatives collected over the year must be sorted, structured, connected into chains and turned into evidence admissible in court. While information was being collected and transcribed (the accomplices had encrypted everything—from surnames to internal documentation and software), detectives could not clarify details. Any move, even the smallest one, could spook the suspects.

Here’s a simple example: that very “20-thousand-hryvnia certificate at NACP.” A transcript of the conversation is only a skewer… Now it must be threaded with time, the document, the date and internal registries. And so it will be for every episode, even the tiniest ones. Only now do investigators have their hands untied. And NABU needs help. According to our information, a large number of knowledgeable and experienced people are now trying to consult detectives on various corruption schemes. Kolomoiskyi is far from the only one on that list. These people are not witnesses; but when you know where to look, things are found faster.

Second, the expert examinations. There will be many of them, but the crucial ones concern the voices on the recordings. Oleksandr Ruvin, adviser to Minister of Justice Halushchenko, may have been removed from his post as Director of the Kyiv Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Examinations, but Ruvin is not a position. He is the tsar of “correct forensic reports,” and in practice he hasn’t gone anywhere. The state forensic system remains firmly under the control of the Presidential Office, and therefore we are likely to see one of two scenarios: either we get the “Kaufman option”—when experts ostensibly “could not” identify the voices on NABU’s tapes, forcing SAPO to strike a deal with him—or the “hacker lawyers option”—when professional integrity actually prevails, the voices are properly identified, and Borzykh & Co. are left to fight it out in court, trying to prove their innocence.

If the authorities attempt to block the examination, it will be much harder for them to achieve the desired result: NABU has conducted operational recordings at numerous locations. Plus, there is always the option of a private expert examination, for which the anti-corruption agencies have a budget. And failing to use it would be a serious misstep.

Third, the State Financial Monitoring Service led by Filip Pronin. This is where a real blockade begins. In the Fire Point case, NABU has not received a single response from financial monitoring in nine months. And in the Mindich investigation, there is an enormous volume of data on the laundering of stolen money across various sectors. These include transactions, payment structures, withdrawal chains, and gaps in the transaction chain — everything financial monitoring can process quickly. International partners (with whom NABU will now have to work directly) can do this as well, but far more slowly. And the investigation has only 12 months.

What the president and the authorities have to do

The authorities hesitated for a long time, but eventually took several steps. The Cabinet of Ministers dissolved the Supervisory Board of Energoatom — giving board member Tymofii Mylovanov the chance, just hours before the decision, to suddenly see the light and leap out of the boardroom in a spotless white tuxedo. Energoatom’s Vice President and management board member Jakob Hartmut was removed from office, as was Dmytro Basov (“Tenor”) — a suspect in the investigation and the company president’s chief consultant. Minister of Justice Herman Halushchenko and his civil wife, Minister of Energy Svitlana Hrynchuk, are set to be dismissed. But note: not on the initiative of the parliament or the cabinet, but on the initiative of the president, who formally has nothing to do with this process.

At Zelenskyy’s request, sanctions were also imposed on Tymur Mindich and Oleksandr Zuckerman. For three years. That does not apply to state honors—these restrictions are in place indefinitely. Seriously? There are more questions. First, where did the government obtain Israeli passports to submit them for sanctions? Second, what property will be seized? Property registered to Israeli passports and located in Israel? (The explanations given by the president’s sanctions envoy have not clarified much.) Third, how was the National Security and Defense Council meeting held, when its secretary Umerov had been abroad for three days and cannot handle classified documents from outside the country?

(After a brief pause, Volodymyr Zelenskyy decided to distance himself from his communications with close friend Tymur Mindich, stating that he had not spoken to him since the start of the investigation in the energy sector. Formally, the investigation began on November 10. When the president starts counting the beginning of the “operational phase” is anyone’s guess. Yet, according to well-trusted ZN.UA sources, from the moment Mindich left the country in June (when the president sent him to bring Chernyshov back to Ukraine) until his return in October, the president spoke with Mindich by phone three times, each time cooling his friend’s eagerness to return to Ukraine.)

Have the authorities done enough? No.

It would take the president five minutes to issue a decree removing Herman Halushchenko, Svitlana Hrynchuk and Filip Pronin from the National Security and Defense Council. These three have long had grounds for removal—and in truth, they should never have been appointed. But the president is in no hurry.

The next micro-step the president must take—if he wants to prove that he has changed his mind about protecting Mindich & Co., and that he is truly ready to begin fixing the system—is to give a real green light to the NABU and SAPO investigation, namely:

• an independent audio examination, free from the influence of those who spent years “guarding the voices”;
• immediate unblocking of the Financial Monitoring Service, which has ignored NABU’s requests on Fire Point for nine months;
• guarantees of non-interference from law enforcement and security agencies in the Mindich case;
• public protection for the detectives and prosecutors conducting the investigation.

The president can do all of this in one day. If he wishes to.

Today, it is impossible to predict how many more people in power are sitting on a powder keg, waiting for NABU to come for them. The Presidential Office is no exception. Before Mindich, Halushchenko, and Shurma entered the game, every financial stream in the energy sector flowed into the hands of Oleh Tatarov — the curator of the law enforcement system, undeservedly “forgotten” by the media landscape. The veteran operators of the shadow commercial world — the Zuckerman brothers — have known him well for a long time. And whose money have they not laundered? Politicians’, security officials’, businesspeople’s — everyone’s. People who provide such delicate services tend to have vast networks It was precisely Oleksandr and Mykhailo Zuckerman who, according to ZN.UA’s sources, used Mindich to help strengthen the Yermak faction that opposed Andrii Bohdan, the former head of the Presidential Office. And later, through that same Mindich, they supported Oleh Tatarov’s appointment. As Soviet musician Boris Grebenshchikov once said, “A long memory is worse than syphilis — especially in a close circle…”

Does NABU know this? According to our information, it does. Just as they likely understand that exposing Mindich also “helped” Yermak eliminate a rival. Now the Head of the Presidential Office is the only one whispering in the president’s ear. But what can a person who never stopped Zelenskyy in time—and in fact pushed him toward the abyss—say to the president now?

The whole system must be cleaned. Completely. Not only of thieves but also of fools and the helpers of people like Derkach. The president knows very well how the system works because he built it himself. Zelenskyy set the rules for “how to please the president,” rules that have nothing to do with competence, professionalism or principle. They are about something else: “I am entirely yours; I will do everything you say.”

The extension of power without elections has led to its degeneration. At every level. We can see it in the parliament’s decisions, in the behavior of local authorities. And in the place where the president’s incompetence, reluctance to listen and refusal to accept criticism—which could have helped steer a warring nation in the right direction—have finally brought us.

Zelenskyy’s only chance to “rewind the tape” is to turn to professionals; they have to take their rightful places in the government. He must return to them the share of power assigned to them by the Constitution. Restore the parliament’s ability to act. Begin resetting the law enforcement system through honest competitions. Loosen his grip on the security services. ZN.UA has written about this for three years. For the sake of conscience, we repeat it now.

And above all, the president must begin an honest conversation with the people. From scratch. To survive.

To signal the frontline: “We will try again. For you and for the country.”

Through this, Zelenskyy can regain public trust. And show the West that Ukraine remains a country they can work with, guiding it to peace and to elections. Elections in which a candidate named Zelenskyy should not appear. But perhaps history will remember a man who proved capable of stepping outside the confines he built for himself.

For the world is larger than Mindich’s “laundry.” Ukraine is greater than an estate in Kozyn. And it deserves victory—both over the enemy, and over itself.