Oleksandr Klymenko, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, has initiated an internal probe into a possible leak of information, the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) said on Nov. 10.
The probe follows reports that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s former business partner Timur Mindich was tipped off about the possible searches and was able to leave the country beforehand.
The leaks occurred in the past two weeks, a law enforcement source told the Kyiv Independent.
The Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office told the Kyiv Independent it could not provide any comments at this time.
Mindich, a co-owner of the president’s Kvartal 95 production company, has expanded his business interests in recent years, according to journalist investigations.
An investigation into Mindich’s activities by the Anti-Corruption Bureau was one of the factors that led to an attempt by the authorities to eliminate the NABU’s independence in July, law enforcement sources told the Kyiv Independent.
The NABU said on Nov. 10 that it was investigating a major corruption scheme in the energy sector, including Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom.
As part of the investigation, the NABU conducted searches in Kyiv the same day in premises connected to Mindich, law enforcement sources told the Kyiv Independent.
On Nov. 10, online newspaper Ukrainska Pravda published video footage of Andriy Synyuk, the deputy head of the SAPO, meeting with Oleksiy Meniv, a lawyer who visited Mindich’s apartment building in the same period.
According to the news outlet’s sources, Synyuk had access to the Mindich case.
Synyuk has denied leaking any information in the Mindich case and said he was friends with Meniv. Synyuk also said that Meniv’s former wife and children live in the same house as Mindich.
Synyuk was the runner-up in the contest for the job of chief anti-corruption prosecutor. He eventualy lost the race to Klymenko.
Anti-corruption activists questioned his independence at that time since he was a subordinate of then Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova. They argued that the President’s Office was pushing for Synyuk to get the chief anti-corruption prosecutor job opening.
Klymenko nominated him as his deputy in 2022, and Synyuk was appointed as deputy head of the SAPO by then Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin, a Zelensky loyalist.
Read also: Who is Timur Mindich, Zelensky’s secretive associate at the center of a major corruption probe?
From The Kyiv Independent - News from Ukraine, Eastern Europe via this RSS feed