The Weekend Intelligence: Operation Midas

This intelligence podcast is sponsored by Backmarket, the leading global marketplace for refurbished tech. When the kids need phones, laptops, or tablets for school, buying refurbished tech makes sense for families trying to save money without sacrificing quality. At Backmarket, tech costs up to 50% less compared to new. All devices have been professionally refurbished and come with a one-year warranty and 30-day return policy. Start saving money. Visit Backmarket.com or the Backmarket app to shop now. The Economist. The timing couldn't be worse. The war in Ukraine has been dragging on for nearly four long years. America and Russia are bandying a peace plan that Ukraine had little part in composing. And now the president's closest confidant is in the headlines. For all the wrong reasons. And that's just one part of the giant crisis now engulfing the country. Ukraine's history of corruption is long and torrid. When Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019, he campaigned as an anti-establishment figure who promised to root out fraud. Things did seem to be getting better. But now detectives have unearthed the biggest corruption scandal in Ukraine's history. Today we're going to track that scandal and that of Operation Midas, the multi-agency probe, into how $100 million, probably more, was stolen from a country at war by its own elite. This story has everything. Crazy code names like Che Guevara, Alibaba and Rocket. It has bribes. bugs, spy cams and luxury villas, and like all good oligarch dramas, it has a golden toilet. It might be salacious, but for the bigger picture, an existential war in Europe, a president who will not bend, government bodies that fear being branded traitors if they act, and traitors if they don't.

I'm Rosie Bloor, and today on the Weekend Intelligence, my colleague Oliver Carroll, takes you inside Ukraine to the core of the rot. Ollie is among the few reporters who was on the trail of this scandal months before it hit the news, exhaustively following leads, talking to sources and trying to untangle the many tentacles of the investigation. You'll need to listen carefully. We've voiced some tapes of leaked conversations so they're in English, but there are lots of names here. and lots of government agencies. And of course, the jigsaw is not yet complete. This story is still unfolding. And it could yet spell the end for the man who stands as a figurehead of the values the West claims to uphold. It's July 2025. We're in Kiev, eavesdropping on a conversation between a government advisor, codenamed Rocket, and a security manager at the state nuclear energy company, Energa Atom, codename Tenor. Speaking in coarse Russian, sprinkled with profanities, They're discussing something pretty galling for a country at war. What they're suggesting is skimping on protecting Ukraine's energy grid from Russian missile strikes. Strikes that have plunged much of the country into the dark and cold for three winters in a row. But these men? They're more interested in pocketing millions in kickbacks. It's a waste of money, says Rocket. By grim coincidence, the same locations they intentionally neglected were hit just two days before this tape was made public.

This tape, I said, I'm going to pay them. This tape, as others, were recorded on secret listening devices, in flats, in the Uckoning capital. over the course of the last year and a half. I first had rumours of Operation Midas this summer. I was told by my sources, spooks, government officials, people close to the investigation itself, that things were about to get very embarrassing for Ukraine's leadership. But, truth be told, no one, myself included. realized just how seismic the revelations would be. Now, the curtains are being pulled back, and it is proving to be the biggest, most consequential corruption investigation in the history of Ukraine. And all of this is happening at the most delicate of geopolitical moments, just as Russia and the United States are pressuring Ukraine into accepting a poisoned peace.

We will split it in three ways between you, me and the professor. Let me check what numbers we have. I wrote them down somewhere. I'll just deduct it right away. But we haven't gone through this whole thing to the end. Yeah, just let me calculate quickly. It's 62,000. At this moment, Rokit and Tenor have no idea that just five months after this conversation, they will contribute to bringing down the central pillar of Volodymyr Zelensky's administration. His chief of staff, Andri Hirmak. The man who was Volodymyr Zelensky's unofficial vice president, chief advisor, chief negotiator, a Rasputin-like figure at Volodymyr Zelensky's shoulder. Now gone. This is the story of Operation Midas, an investigation that wasn't supposed to happen. One which powerful actors, all the way along, did their best to thwart. It is based on the testimony of officials, detectives and witnesses. Not all of them allowed to speak publicly. Some afraid to. And it is a story that is only just beginning. Alexander Abakumov is the public face of this investigation. As you can imagine, he's a busy man these days. So he's answering my questions by recording voice memos as he's being driven around Kyiv. Abakumov is an unassuming guy with a big job. He's chief detective at an organization called Nabu, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. Now, this is the investigative branch of the anti-corruption package established in the wake of the Maidan Revolution of 2014. It's a trifecta. Stay with me now. You'll need to hold on to another two acronyms aside from Nabu. First, Sapo, which is the anti-corruption prosecutors. And second, Vax, which is the high anti-corruption court. All three were created under Western pressure as a check on government. They ran in parallel with Ukraine's existing, objectively corrupt justice system.

When we realized the amount of money passing through the office, we understood that this was perhaps the case unlike anything NABU had dealt with before. It is very large in scope and it covers many directions. Operation Midas, the investigation into the Energo-Atom scheme, began in the summer. of 2024. The energy sector has always been an area in which there is a lot of talk about various unlawful actions by different actors. And many people publicly expose corruption, but our task was not just to investigate an isolated incident reported by an individual, but to uncover systemic corruption. They called it barrier. a scheme that skimmed millions of Energa Atom's public contracts. The deal was simple enough. Suppliers that the Nuclear Energy Agency were made to pay an extra 10 to 15%, or be shut out of lucrative tenders. As it's a nuclear agency, responsible for the majority of Ukraine's power, contracts are huge.

Abacomu and his colleagues followed along in real time for months. Listening in on the Grifter's recordings. It was a gradual accumulation of knowledge that revealed how important this investigation was. Certainly, part of that was listening to the conversation where such cynical things were being discussed. Things like underspending on protection for energy facilities and about persuading contractors to deliver goods of inadequate quality. The criminal group worked under aliases, names they chose for themselves. This is common practice among criminals and even among the detectives who pursue them. It makes it hard to pin down identities and harder still to assign guilt before a court. After all, a murky tape means nothing if you can't link a voice to the crime. So Abakumov and his team had to triangulate.

When we heard a nickname like Rocket in a conversation, we tried to determine who that was. But the subject of that investigation helped us themselves through their discussions about where someone was when they were meeting them and how they referred to them. The scene inside the Nabi operation is exactly as you might imagine. special rooms with whiteboards, photos, notes and bits of string connecting the suspects bit by bit. For the detectives involved, it became an all-encompassing affair. For example, with one nickname, it was mentioned several times that this person was abroad. We checked everyone who could be connected to the group and looked for those who were abroad at that time. Then they would say, I met him here and there. We checked who was in those places and the educated times. And this way, through a combination of objective indicators, location, meeting details, we established which nickname corresponded to which person. Of course, things become easier if someone slips up, which eventually they did. Remember Rocket and Tenor? The government advisor and security manager we heard discussing a three-way split? Well, in one take, they reveal the names of some of the managers they were giving kickbacks to.

I suggest we start going over the financials right away. Yeah, you know more now. Construction is 1005 and this is a military. Okay, and 5 and 5, that's 1 grand. 10 is yours. 3 goes to the... Did I forget anyone? And again. for the closet matters. 19. That comes out of 20,000 minus a hundred dollars. Minus a hundred dollars, so that's 20,000. It looks like everything. Nabu's investigation of the Energa Atom scheme has traced at least $100 million of kickbacks. And that is only what investigators have been able to prove so far. The number is likely to rise as the investigation continues. And to be clear, this was not a few bad actors. For this to go undetected, for so long, it required the participation of vast numbers of people. It was a corrupt cancer running through the state.

The Energa Atom investigation may have been the case that brought the criminal syndicate down, but it's not actually where the story begins. That all started two years ago, in late 2023, with a corrupt property developer making an approach to a Ukrainian politician, Alexander Kubrakov. Back then, Kubrakov was a rising star of Volodymyr Zelensky's government, Minister for Infrastructure, and talked of as a future Prime Minister. The developer offered a kickback deal to wink through land rights. What he didn't know was that Kubrakov was talking to anti-corruption investigators at the same time, and the transaction he was about to enter was, in fact, a sting operation. When they arrested the developer, Nambu detectives tried to get him to cooperate to see how many other figures in government had taken the money before Kubrakov entrapped him. The developer refused. He even threatened detectives, flaunting his dangerous high-level contacts. But his seized devices were the key to opening the next door in the investigation. It was there that detectives found compromising messages that led to the secretary of Alexei Chernoshov, a deputy prime minister. The detectives understood they were entering dangerous territory. The deputy prime minister wasn't just powerful, He was part of the president in a sanctum. A close friend. First Lady Olena Zelenska is even godmother to one of his children. Chernoshov was put under surveillance. And it was this, it seems, that led detectives to stumble across the existence of a secret money laundering office. The office that was running the money for the Energa Atom ruse. Don't worry. No, no, I'm not worried. Chernishov features heavily in the Energa-Atom tapes. He goes by the alias, Che Guevara, a curious choice for the soft-faced, gangly, awkward-looking bureaucrat who has a predilection for expensive suits. Here, he's speaking with Sugarman. Sugarman is the less playful pseudonym for businessman Alexander Zuckerman. Tsukraman is discussing the best ways of directing funds to Chonashov. Look, this is the situation. Here I have $300,000. Here, $200,000 and 96,500 euros, which is the equivalent of $100,000. Everything is now here. Yeah, I suggest we just distribute it into this. Meaning, cons am not as the same, but as. I withdrew this from the cash desk. You get it? I understand that. I appreciate that. There are no other sources for now. In time, detectives eventually worked out that Chornashov was in charge of funding the development of four ostentatious villas in an elite district just to the south of Kyiv. One of the four was owned by Chornashov himself. The others? I'll come back to that. As for Kubrakov, the original whistleblower, once whispers spread of what he'd done, his luck in government began to run out. On 9th of May, 2024,

Ukraine's parliament, under the instruction of the president's office, voted to dismiss him. But there was no putting this particular genie back. Detectives at Nabu and Sappho already understood the scale of what was to come. Alexander Klimenko is the head of that second branch of Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure, Sappo. the prosecution's body. His job was to make sure there was enough evidence to prosecute, and he was part of the investigation from the get-co. From an operational sources, we received an information that within one of the energy companies of Ukraine, there existed a so-called back office in Kiev, and we started to refine that information. Klimenko is an understated guy, a career detective. He's known for being calm and focused. I was the only one at Sapo who knew about this operation from the very beginning. At the final stage, another prosecutor was involved. I didn't dare involve anyone else yet in the development of the Midas operation. The circle was kept tight. At the start, just a couple of people, then half a dozen. We didn't even dare to use a phone bag, so those aspects, since we could only do that through the security service of Ukraine, and that leads to information leaks. So without a wiretapping font, that means we had to use no methods from us 50s and 60s. First, we would locate someone, then we would need to plan a bug physically where they are. So we carried out a case this complex without any 21st century technology. Someone with knowledge of the investigation explained to me that planting the bugs usually required cooperation from people on the inside. The source said it's not that much different from Spycraft in the sense that they are usually using three main ways of getting cooperation. One is to blackmail with compromising material. The second, to pay cash. The third is to get people on board ideologically. The last method is best, the source said. Likely, they tried all three. Many people identify Kilimanco as one of the main engines of the probe, constantly pushing it forward. His part is another one of those improbable moments. He won the competition to Head Sapo in late 2021, but vested interest did everything to block that appointment. It was only half a year later, and with the West threatening to withhold funding at a key stage in the war, that the system relented. For his detractors, Klimenko is trouble, a man who doesn't take the hints. He's certainly made a lot of enemies of those in power, since he took the job. Not only Chernoshov, Another man, codename Tucker Carlson, would certainly be on that list too. Tucker Carlson, also known as Timor Mindich, is a long-time friend of the president. And the co-founder of Quartal 95, the media company that predated Volodymyr Zelensky's move into politics. A mogul, TV producer, and a Machiavellian operator behind the scenes, Mindich's influence extended across the world of politics and business.

He's been accused of being the co-organiser of the syndicate behind the Enedga Atomruz. And if you're wondering how he spent some of his ill-gotten gains, well, photographs showed some clues, with one showing a golden toilet bowl in one of his apartments. The tapes contain plenty worse. At one point, Money Guy Sugarman complains of back pain. from lugging all the millions of dollars to laundry points around Kiev. And how did you carry the box? To him? What the issue, just carry it? No, I mean the guy who brought it to you. What did he give you to him? The box had a handle, like how a laptop is packaged. That's it. I packaged it later for... Because I took the million out. Then it's the same box, gave back 1.6. But yeah, carrying around 1.6 million isn't exactly pleasant. Extraordinary cynicism, when viewed by ordinary Ukrainians, entering their fourth winter of war, many in cold and dark apartments, some in even grimmer trenches. The greatest test of the detective's creativity came when the criminals caught wind of their efforts. Fuck, I want to see the expert who will be the cold in this in future. I'm the one checking all of it myself. Why are you doing this? What I've been so active about? Well, I wrote down some questions or whatever. They might be able to answer some of them. I'm telling you, they've decoded everything. All those codes. Leave it here. No, look, listen. We already talked about this. If there's a rat among us. Yeah, but even those rats don't know your codes. And this is my water. Drink your own, for God's sake.

They started taking measures to cover their tracks. They began deleting and destroying some documents. The day before the search, we know that one of the offices were the laundering of funds took place conducted a thorough cleaning and began wiping fingerprints to make it impossible to establish criminal responsibility. Over at Saupo, Klimko learned that the criminal network had gained access to secret government CCTV feeds. The tables are turned. Now they were able to spy on the detectives from afar. There was a conscious surveillance. During searches of their offices, we found materials showing that operatives more or less understood which unit might be investigating them. They collected reports, had photographs of a manabler vehicles moving around Kiev. So they were doing some digging too. And now that our operation had been made public, we will investigate who in the service was helping them. In the tapes, Timor Mindich, the man with the golden toilet, is hired telling a junior operative that work on Chernashar's villa estate would have to stop while the detectives were sniffing around. Freeze it for the winter? For a year.

Oh, for God's sake, fuck. I put my whole damn soul into that place. Just fucked up. Just to freeze it and leave. What a nightmare. We just can't. You understand? It's a nightmare for me. And not for me? Stupid fucker. If he gets exposed in that case, we are all fucked. Nabu made their first overt move in June 2025, charging the Deputy Prime Minister Chernoshov with abuse of power and accepting bribes of an especially large sum. This was a result of evidence that flowed from the first Nabu sting operation with whistleblower Kubrakov, not directly from the Energa Atom Scheme. With law enforcement closing in on a fellow corruption year, you might have expected the stealing to stop. But in a further sign of their audacity, it actually continued for several more months. There appears to have been an assumption that they would never be brought to account. They were very nearly right. In the wake of Chornashov's arrest, parts of the government mobilised. In July, the presidential office dramatically increased the stakes. They began to wage a new war. against Ukraine's anti-corruption machine. For those looking in from the outside, last summer's protests might have looked like any old rally against new legislation. In truth, it was a tense standoff between unchecked power and accountability.

This Economist podcast is sponsored by Bill, the intelligent finance platform that helps businesses and accounting firms scale with proven results. With AI-powered automation, Bill isn't just moving money. They're simplifying financial operations for nearly half a million customers. Bill has securely processed over a trillion dollars in transactions. That's proven infrastructure. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.com slash proven and get a $150 gift card as a thank you. That's bill.com slash proven. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. Temperatures had been rising for a week. On July the 11th, investigators under presidential control went after Kubrakov, the original whistleblower. They raided his office, as well as that of a well-known anti-corruption activist. The aim appears to have been to discredit them. On July 21st, Ukraine's security services, also under presidential control, then arrested several Nabu detectives who were directly involved with the investigation. They accused some of them of collaborating with Russia. Two of them were held 20 to a cell in pre-trial detention for several months. The very next day, July 22nd, MPs were summoned to a hurried vote by the President's Office. They were asked to pass a bill that would put the trifecter of anti-corruption bodies under the direct supervision of a newly installed and pliant general prosecutor. Voldemoisolensky presented the changes as cleansing an inefficient system from Russian influence. Few in the know bought that line. Had the moves against Nabil and Sapo been successful, they would have lost their ability to investigate freely, something Detective Abakumov was always actively aware of. We understand that the proposed actions were aimed at making such investigation subject to the direct oversight of the Prosecutor General. who is a political appointee. It's not clear what exactly the presidential office knew about Nabuzah investigations at the time they tried to defang them. They certainly knew that a member of their inner circle, Chodnashov, was in trouble. They almost certainly also knew of the existence of the tapes. By the end of July, even I was aware of them. They knew enough to decide the investigation needed to go away. What the president's office hadn't quite reckoned with was the scale of the public's reaction. Thousands took to the square below the presidential compound to demand the climb down, risking in the process, martial law arrest. It was far from clear how the drama would end. President Volodymyr Zelensky, I was being pressured on the one hand to reverse course by Western partners, the public and even some of his officials. But others wanted him to stay the course. But others wanted him to stay the course.

A repressive response against the protesters risked barking mass violence in a country armed to the teeth. In the end, Volodymyr Zelensky decided his only choice was to walk it back. Prosecutor Alexander Klimenko credits the Ukrainian people for saving his investigation, without having a full idea it was even happening. If the law hadn't been rolled back and the people hadn't taken to the streets, we would have simply lost this operation, but they went out and defended our independent, so we were able to complete it. But at the time, the legislation was adopted in the summer, we don't believe the administration knew about this case. The rollback of the law was not the end of the story. It did nothing to blunt the appetite of corrupt officials who wanted to shut the inquiry down. For the detectives, though, Nabuz Abakumov included, it had stoked a new fire. Honestly, the July events motivated us. We already knew what we were investigating and who might be involved. We had assembled the puzzle that took the first eight months to piece together. But then, that motivation helped us accelerate and achieve the result we did in November. Ukraine's anti-corruption bodies were on collision clause with some very powerful interests. Soon enough, some very strange things started happening. In September, reports surfaced of an extremely odd infiltration of a disgraced former MP, Fyder Christenko, from the United Arab Emirates. It was an extraordinary event, given how the Emirati authorities almost never permit such transfers. Short messages the former MP shared with local journalists suggested his return had been secured only after the deputy head of Ukraine's security services had issued him something akin to a death threat. On his return to Ukraine, Christenko appeared in court, charged with state treason. On November the 15th, the former MP struck a deal with state prosecutors. In Ukraine, such deals require three things, admitting guilt, paying damages, and crucially agreeing to testify against someone else. Multiple sources suggest he was about to be deployed in some underhand way to bring down both Klimenko and the Nabu detectives. At the same time, some media outlets loyal to the presidential office began portraying them as agents of Moscow. A source told me it had become a matter of who arrested whom first. Early in the morning of November 28th, anti-corruption detectives appeared in the presidential quarter. They had come with a warrant to search the home and the offices of the president's chief of staff.

Andrei Yermak. President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced a government reshuffle after the resignation of his chief of staff, Andre Yermak. Despite holding no elected position, Andrei Yermak was seen as the second most powerful man in Ukraine. There was barely a government process that did not run through Andrei Yermak. If the aid is implicated, it would be huge. and would force massive questions about President Volodymyr Zelensky's judgment. Sources with knowledge of the investigation tell me his office was raided in connection with an illegal enrichment charge, which may or may not come. Remember those four luxurious fillers being developed in Kiev? I told you one of them was for former Deputy Prime Minister Chernoshov. Well, my sources say there is some suggestion that Yermak was the intended owner of one of the other villas. It has been widely reported he appears in the tapes too, as codename Ali Baba, an apparent reference to his first name and patronymic, Andri Barisovich. I should make clear that no charges have been laid against Yermak, and he strongly asserts his innocence. But politically, Volodymyr Zelensky felt he had no choice. The material presented to him in dramatic meetings inside the presidential compound, cut any room for maneuver. Twelve hours after the detectives turned up to search his office, Yermak was out. And he took it badly. Very badly. Sources tell me Yirmak was beside himself, even yelling at the president that he had betrayed him.

The shock of Operation Mindas continues to reverberate across Ukraine. People discuss it everywhere, in shops, offices, barracks, even government ministries. It is not the first time that compromising tapes have surfaced. Ukrainians remember the recordings which put then-president Leonid Kuchma in the spotlight after the grotesque murder of journalist Georgi Gangazi in 2000. But the evidence then was never conclusive, and Kuchma was able to claim he had nothing to do with it. Not so now. Never before has a political scandal been documented with such clarity, and by an independent arm of the state itself. So far, Ukraine's parliament has dismissed the energy and the justice ministers for their mere appearance in the scandal, even though they have not been formally charged. Deputy Prime Minister Chernoshov has had new charges added to his tally. All assert their innocence. As for Volodymyr Zelensky's former business partner, Timor Mindich, that's Mr Golden Toilip Bowl, he fled the country before he could be arrested. Investigators say some of the spores of the Energa Atom scheme have been traced by wire to Moscow. It will take a long time if it is at all possible to understand what happened with the rest. Many of the low-level associates face charges, likely with an opportunity to cut deals with the anti-corruption authorities. That means this investigation still has legs. For detectives like Abakumov, the backdrop of war is reason enough to keep doggedly pursuing the case.

Then the government, parliament and the president must make a decision to prevent such a back-office of sumable schemes in other sectors. That's all. I think this situation gives the country a chance to become much better. When you speak to some of the people behind this investigation, the detectives, the bureaucrats, you realize something about the dedication of their work. One of them told me an internal motto, don't think about the consequences. That's the thing that has been driving this investigation from the start, but it's also something that might cause the country reputational damage internationally, at least in the short term. Procedurally, the case is still in its very early stages. The revelations a month ago merely closed the first covert phase. Now detectives have a year to pursue the full investigation, conduct searches and examine any material they seize. No one can say what it will reveal. We calculated only what we overheard. About 100 million US dollars went through that office, but now we must examine everything ceased during searches. I think the final amount will be much larger. For now, the heads of the anti-corruption bodies are treading carefully. Last Friday, they seemed ready to give Volodymyr Zelensky the flag bearer of a country at war. some chance to manage the situation. The danger if this battle escapes control is stark enough. By the end, there may be no one left with the authority to sign a deal that ends this war.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Weekend Intelligence. If you know someone who might enjoy this story, you can share it with them on the Economist app, even with non-subscribers. Click the share button and select Give us a Gift. And excitingly, the Weekend Intelligence now has its own feed too, so you can listen to our brilliant back catalogue or even relisten. This episode was reported by Oliver Carroll and Marta Roganova and produced by Sarah Larnuk. Sound design was by Nico Rofast and Tom Birchall and fact-checking by Andrea Burgess. The executive producer of the Weekend Intelligence is Gemma Newby. That's it from us. See you back here on Monday.