The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) in cooperation with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) has been conducting a major crackdown on NAEK Enerhoaom since Monday morning.

"The activities of a high-level criminal organization have been documented," the office said on the Telegram platform about the investigation, which includes thousands of hours of audio recordings and lasted 15 months.

"Its members have built a large-scale corruption system to influence strategic public sector enterprises, in particular NAEK Enerhoaatom," the NABU added. In the post , it also published photographs showing large amounts of US dollars, euros and Ukrainian hryvnia seized.

Verkhovna Rada deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak (Holos) wrote on his channel that NABU agents raided the home of former energy minister Herman Halushchenko, who is now the head of the Justice Ministry.

NABU sources confirmed these searches to the best-known domestic daily Ukrainska Pravda. However, in a similarly shocking piece of information, the house of a former associate of President Volodymyr Zelensky named Timur Mindych was also the target of one of the searches.

The latter had previously founded the production company Kvartal 95 with the Ukrainian leader. Like the (in Ukraine) well-known Shefirov brothers, he is on the lists of founders of offshore companies in the Caribbean, known as the Pandora Papers.

The timing of the publication of the news of the raids itself also raises doubts. The investigations into Enerhoatom and the former energy minister distract from the potential fall of the city of Pokrovsk into Russian hands, as well as Moscow's continued territorial gains in the Zaporizhzhya region.

(ukrinform, reuters, sab)