On September 17 (Moscow time), according to TASS news agency, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov said that the country's anti-corruption agencies had collected 1,000 hours of recordings related to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his close associates, and began reviewing these documents.
“The work has begun and is going very positively. Look at the scale - 1,000 hours of recording made at the apartment of businessman Timur Mindich, Zelensky's business partner, where Zelensky, former Chief of the Presidential Office Andrey Yermak and the entire Ukrainian leadership visited,” Azarov told TASS.
According to Mr. Azarov, 1,000 hours of recording is a huge amount of documents. He said that the people appearing in the recordings spoke openly because they did not think they could be recorded.
Mr. Azarov also accused the anti-corruption agencies of Ukraine, established with the support of the US Democratic Party, of being a tool to influence and control the leadership in Kiev.
The above statement was made in the context of a large-scale corruption investigation conducted by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO). The investigation, called "Mindichgate", in the name of businessman Timur Mindich, is currently the focus of a large-scale corruption and money laundering scandal in Ukraine involving the energy sector.
TASS reported that investigators have identified Mr. Mindich as the coordinator of a corruption ring. The investigation has led to the resignation of several ministers and the dismissal of Mr. Yermak, and has also temporarily disrupted the operation of the Ukrainian Parliament.
The investigation is still ongoing. NABU said it will announce more new details as the investigation progresses.
