Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fired one of his most senior officials Wednesday as corruption investigators named a deputy head of the presidential office among the suspects in a money-laundering case.
The stunning developments came a day after Ukraine’s recently fired defense minister demanded national elections, despite Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion. Zelenskyy has maintained that such a ballot is not allowed under wartime laws.
Although Zelenskyy was not implicated in the graft investigation, it threatened to pull him into another political crisis and provide another test of his resilience.
Investigators gave few details of the probe. It has identified a group of people alleged to have laundered 150 million hryvnias ($3.4 million) to pay bail for a defendant in a major graft case last year, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau said.
That case, involving the state-owned nuclear power company, brought the resignations of Ukraine’s justice and energy ministers.
The latest suspects include a former lawmaker, the chairperson of a state bank’s board and the head of the bank’s supervisory board, as well as a deputy head of the presidential office, the agency said.
Zelenskyy made no public comment on the investigation but issued a decree dismissing Iryna Mudra as deputy head of the Office of the President. Investigators have not named her as a suspect.
Investigators searched Mudra’s office Wednesday, said lawmaker Oleksii Honcharenko.
Zelenskyy remains dogged by high-level graft investigations, although he has never been named as a suspect even as the probes have engulfed officials close to him. Last year, his chief of staff Andriy Yermak resigned and later was named as a suspect in a major graft probe involving a luxury construction project in the biggest threat to Zelenskyy’s government since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
The European Union has identified deep-seated corruption as one of the major hurdles to Ukraine’s desired membership in the bloc.
Source: AP
