EU financial aid to Ukraine must be stopped due to the growing corruption in the country, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Facebook.
„Brussels has been financing the Ukrainian state for years with European money. Meanwhile, corruption is widespread in Ukraine and it is not surprising that no one has yet seen an accurate report on how the funds received from the EU are spent...“, the politician wrote.
„And what does Brussels want in the meantime? To send even more money to Ukraine, to President Zelensky, in whose inner circle a large-scale corruption network was recently revealed... It is time to stop this madness; we must stop sending the money of the European peoples to Ukraine!“, Szijjártó added.
On Monday, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine launched a large-scale special operation to uncover corruption schemes in the energy sector. The agency published a photo on its Telegram channel showing bags filled with bundles of foreign currency; the exact amount has not yet been disclosed.
Verkhovna Rada deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak explained that the Anti-Corruption Bureau had searched the homes of former Energy Minister German Galushchenko and the company “Energoatom“. According to the publication “Ukrainska Pravda“, anti-corruption officers also searched the home of businessman Timur Mindych. According to Zheleznyak, the businessman was “preliminarily hastily taken out” from Ukraine.
Excerpts from audio recordings in the energy sector corruption case were later published, including conversations between Mindich, the representative of “Energoatom“ Dmitry Basov and Galushchenko's advisor Igor Mironyuk.
The agency also found that funds from schemes for abuse in the energy sector in Ukraine were "laundered" through an office in central Kiev.