Who is Vadym Iermolaiev? The sanctioned Ukrainian businessman injured in the Monaco blast
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Ukrainian businessman Vadym Iermolaiev, who faced an assassination attempt in Monaco on June 29, is little-known nationwide but wielded immense influence in the city of Dnipro.
Iermolaiev is controversial.
He has renounced his Ukrainian citizenship and has been sanctioned by Ukraine due to alleged collaboration with Russia. He denies the accusations.
Meanwhile, Iermolaiev’s son is being investigated in connection with illegal call centers in Ukraine.
The Kyiv Independent explains who Iermolaiev is and why, despite not having lived in Ukraine for years, he still maintains a presence in the country.
What happened?
Iermolaiev, his wife and their 13-year-old son were injured in an explosion in an apartment building in Monaco on June 29. The parents are both in critical condition, while the child is reportedly stable after sustaining non-life-threatening injuries.
Christophe Mirmand, Monaco's minister of state, told Agence-France Presse that the explosion was "likely an attack."
Monaco's Prosecutor General Stephane Thibault said an individual was seen leaving a bag or package in the lobby of the building before fleeing the scene. According to Thibault, it is not yet clear why this specific building was targeted.
An oligarch of regional significance
Iermolaiev was born in Dnipro in 1968 and founded Alef Group in 1995.
He is one of Dnipro’s wealthiest and most influential businesspeople and has assets in the agribusiness, real estate, construction materials, and medical equipment industries.
In 2021, Yermolayev ranked 45th in Forbes’ list of richest Ukrainians with a net worth of $220 million. No data was available for the period after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion.
Artem Romaniukov, who was formerly head of Dnipro's Civic Control watchdog and is now an Defense Ministry official, characterized Iermolaiev as “one of the local oligarchs.”
He told the Kyiv Independent that Iermolaiev influenced some pro-Russian members of the Dnipro city council and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast’s legislature.
"He wasn't particularly well known — or, rather, he was known only within fairly narrow business circles," political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko told the Kyiv Independent. "As for his influence, I'd say he did have a certain amount of influence in Dnipro but he had virtually no political influence outside of Dnipro."
Fesenko said that Iermolaiev attempted to "break onto the national stage" and "clearly had some political ambitions."
"But he never made it into the top tier of Ukraine's oligarchs," Fesenko added. "I'd even say he belonged to the second or third tier, not the first."
Breaking ties with Ukraine
Iermolaiev renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2017 and has since been solely a Cypriot citizen.
In a 2024 interview with Forbes Ukraine, Iermolaiev said he had given up his Ukrainian citizenship because he wanted “international protection.”
“The Ukrainian judicial system, to put it mildly, is not ideal, and the tax system is not objective,” he told the magazine.
According to the media outlet Ukrainska Pravda, Iermolaiev has lived in Monaco since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In 2022, Ukrainska Pravda published an investigation into Ukrainian oligarchs living abroad and reported that Iermolaiev led a luxurious lifestyle and drove a $300,000 Bentley Flying Spur.
Sanctions and Crimean business
In 2023, President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed sanctions on Iermolaiev.
He claimed that the sanctions had been directed against “those who aid Russia's aggression, those who assist it, and those who have chosen the disgraceful path of collaborating with the terrorist state.”
The President's Office declined to comment on specific reasons for the sanctions, and the National Security and Defense Council did not respond by the time of publication.
Iermolaiev himself has denied collaborating with Russia.
He had an alcoholic beverage business in Crimea and was accused of controlling it through his proxies after the peninsula’s illegal annexation by Russia in 2014. Iermolaiev denied the accusations.
“We tried to recover our investments (in Crimea), but to no avail,” he told RBC Ukraine in 2024. “By the end of 2015, we had abandoned those efforts. The management of those companies told us they were being intimidated and pressured into re-registering under the laws of the aggressor state.”
Iermolaiev also said that he warned company executives not to re-register the business under Russian law “because it would expose them to criminal liability.”
“But we don't know what kind of pressure they were facing from the other side,” he added. “In the end, they made their own decision and cut off all contact with us. We lost everything."
Iermolaiev’s Crimean business was eventually seized by the Russian occupation government in 2023.
Following the imposition of Ukrainian sanctions against Iermolaiev in 2023, many of his assets were transferred to his daughter Sofia Kononenko, according to an investigation by the Ukrainian news site Glavcom published in 2025.
"It's quite possible that one of his rivals set him up," Fesenko said. "They knew he had assets in Crimea and decided to target him by leaking compromising information about those assets. That's a common practice. In Ukraine, sanctions have very often been used as a tool in business rivalries."
Iermolaiev's son
In December 2025 Iermolaiev’s son Artur was detained in Cyprus as part of an investigation into fraudulent call centers in Ukraine. He was subsequently extradited to Estonia.
Estonian investigators said that, between 2019 and 2022, the defendants, including Artur Iermolaiev, received over 100 million euros ($114 million), of which 5.4 million euros came from Estonian residents.
Artur Iermolaiev reached a plea bargain, received a 5-year suspended sentence, paid a 8.5 million euro fine and then left Estonia.
"I don't see any political motive behind the attack (on Vadym Iermolaiev)," Fesenko said.
"It's much more likely that it was connected to the scam call centers, and most likely to his son. Artur appears to have struck a deal with the investigators and likely gave up his accomplices and the other beneficiaries of the call center network involved in criminal activity. In the end, this appears to have been retaliation."
