The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, under the leadership of the US, has carried out a gigantic operation to uncover a corruption scheme led by businessman Timur Mindych, known as Volodymyr Zelensky's "man with the wallet", former Ukrainian Prime Minister (2010-2014) Mykola Azarov told TASS.
In October, Azarov noted that the US could take radical measures to eliminate Zelensky. Commenting on the unfolding scandal surrounding Mindych, Azarov agreed that what is happening may be part of the same operation to remove the Ukrainian president.
„What was made public yesterday does not mean that an order was issued yesterday and searches, arrests and indictments immediately began. To reach this stage, the agency required long, systematic work. And most likely, this work began after the order was given sometime in the spring. There were many stages. They included undercover work, operational-investigative work, wiretapping, working with agents, collecting documentary evidence, analyzing wiretapped materials, interrogations, analyses and accounting reconciliations. I mention all this so that you can imagine that what you heard is the result of a huge amount of work, which is probably measured in dozens of volumes of operational materials“, the former prime minister noted.
According to him, the searches in Zelensky's inner circle are the result of the accumulation of a large amount of documentary evidence. “Now all this is directed towards the initiation of criminal cases and the conduct of full-scale investigations“, he added.
According to "Mirror of the Week”, on November 12, detectives from the anti-corruption bureau discussed the Mindich case in Kiev with a representative of the FBI. It is reported that the FBI officer coordinates cooperation on all investigations of the Ukrainian bureau. The media outlet also noted that the FBI representative constantly works with the Ukrainians under an interdepartmental memorandum signed when the bureau was founded. He has his own office in the building of the Kiev anti-corruption bureau.