Lawmaker charged in graft case involving President's Office returns to Ukraine
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Editor's note: This story is being updated.
Lawmaker Vadym Stolar, a suspect in a major corporate raiding case involving top officials of the President’s Office, has returned to Ukraine, the High Anti-Corruption Court said on Sept. 11.
The court said that it had set Hr 300 million ($6.7 million) bail for Stolar. The court decided not to place him in custody and imposed travel restrictions.
The Kyiv Independent has requested comment from Stolar and will publish his response once it is received.
Stolar fled abroad before the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) charged him in August with organized crime, embezzlement, corporate raiding, forgery, and hacking.
In August President Volodymyr Zelensky’s former Deputy Chief of Staff Iryna Mudra, lawmaker Maksym Mykytas, and Viktor Dubovyk, head of the legal policy department at the President's Office, were also charged as part of the case. The suspects are accused of both corporate raiding and money laundering.
Stolar, Mudra and Myktytas are accused of illegally seizing real estate by hacking the corporate register, forging documents, and bribing judges and law enforcement agencies.
Apart from that, Mudra and Mykytas are also are accused of laundering Hr 150 million ($3.4 million) and transferring the funds through Sense Bank to post bail for former Justice and Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko.
Halushchenko was charged in February in a case involving state nuclear power monopoly Energoatom — the largest corruption investigation of Zelensky’s tenure.
In June, Mykytas said that Timur Mindich, a Zelensky ally and a suspect in the Energoatom case, had delivered cash for Halushchenko's bail to "Kyrylo Oleksiyovych" — an apparent reference to Zelensky's Chief of Staff Kyrylo Budanov, according to alleged transcripts of NABU tapes published by the media outlet Hromadske.
"Let the court sort it out. You know, it (his name) comes up in a lot of places," Budanov told Hromadske on Aug. 27 when asked about alleged references to him in the tapes.
Stolar represented the pro-Russian Opposition Platform-For Life faction in parliament until it was banned amid Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. Now he represents the Restoration of Ukraine group, an offshoot of the Opposition Platform-For Life.
Stolar has been linked to several controversial construction projects in Kyiv, as well as a scheme that allegedly defrauded hundreds of homebuyers during the 2000s, according to investigative journalists. He has denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
Under former President Petro Poroshenko, Ukrainian media labeled Stolar the “de facto mayor of Kyiv” due to his influence in the city.
Stolar has also partnered up with Artem Kolyubayev, a former business partner of Zelensky's former Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak, according to the Bihus.info investigative project.
