Dozens of searches were carried out on Wednesday in Ukraine in order to fight against corruption. One of them targeted Igor Kolomoiski, a “very influential” billionaire who had helped popularize Volodymyr Zelenskyy before his election in 2019. But the new president wants to distance himself from the “old guard” policy. Explanations. This is the story of a billionaire, oligarch, who helped to make Volodymyr Zelenskyy known… and is now displayed as a symbol of the fight against corruption by the Ukrainian president. But the home of businessman Igor Kolomoiski was raided in Dnipro on Wednesday, February 1, as part of an embezzlement case involving two oil companies – Ukrtatnafta and Ukrnafta, two companies that the billionaire partly owned.
This media search is part of a comprehensive approach by the Ukrainian authorities aimed at combating corruption in the country: the former Minister of the Interior Arsen Avakov, senior officials from the Ministry of Defense and the Ukrainian tax authorities also received a visit of investigators on the same day. These raids come a week after the dismissal of several senior Ukrainian officials over a corruption case involving army supplies.
”Igor Kolomoiski is accused of having been the de facto manager of a public company and thus enriching himself. But it has been an open secret for twenty years in Ukraine: everyone knows that 90% of Ukrainian public companies operate in this way”, explains to France 24 Ryhor Nizhnikau, a specialist in Ukrainian politics at the Institute of Finnish international business.
The shadow of Igor Kolomoiski behind Ukrnafta and PrivatBank
At the center of the current investigations, the company Ukrnafta – the country’s largest oil producer – is considered one of the “most scandalous” state companies in Ukraine, according to a Kiev Post article published in June 2020 .
The Ukrainian newspaper then explained that this company, controlled since 2003 by Igor Kolomoiski “using a legal loophole” when he only owned 42% of the company, “(owed) Ukraine 500 million dollars in unpaid taxes”. Separately, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau estimated that $600 million had been diverted from the company, up to 2015, through front companies.
The name of Igor Kolomoiski also comes up in another file: PrivatBank – the largest bank in Ukraine. The billionaire owned, along with Ukrainian oligarch Gennady Boholiubov, the banking group before the state nationalized it to avoid a collapse of the banking system, in 2016 .
The Ukrainian Central Bank then discovered a $5.5 billion hole in the group’s coffers – nearly 5% of Ukraine’s GDP. “One of the greatest financial scandals of the 21st century”, estimated the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda in 2019 .
“A raid for television” and a signal sent by Volodymyr Zelenskyy
But despite these ongoing suspicious files, Wednesday’s search of Igor Kolomoiski’s home has a more political explanation, according to Ryhor Nizhnikau: “This raid is symbolically important for Volodymyr Zelenskyy . He wants to prove that he no longer depends on anyone and that he no longer needs the old guard of the Ukrainian political elite to govern.”
And the specialist in Ukrainian politics continues: “From a legal point of view, this raid did not lead to anything. It lasted thirty minutes, exactly the time of a TV episode. It was a television raid. It is also not insignificant that it was carried out by the SBU security services, a political body that depends on Volodymyr Zelenskyy , and not by the anti-corruption brigade. This is not a raid to bring down Igor Kolomoiski but to send a signal to the whole political landscape.
The Ukrainian president said Thursday, February 2, that “justice will be done” in his daily message on the Internet, referring to “dozens of searches and other actions in different regions and against different people in the context of criminal proceedings”. A way for Volodymyr Zelenskyy to pose as the cantor of the fight against corruption – which he was already doing before being elected president of Ukraine in 2019.
It is also a way for the Ukrainian president to keep Igor Kolomoiski at a distance: at the start of his mandate, Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been nicknamed “Kolomoiski’s puppet” by his detractors – the oligarch’s television channel, 1+1, one of the main ones in the country, provided favorable coverage of his campaign when he was an actor, broadcasting his comedy shows and then his “Servant of the people” series.
“Creating a new political landscape”
“They were never really close,” says Ryhor Nizhnikau. “Volodymyr Zelenskyy was part of Igor Kolomoisky’s media empire. Above all, the latter hated Petro Poroshenko (President of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, editor’s note), and he supported several candidates who were likely to beat him: Volodymyr Zelenskyy therefore, but also Yulia Tymoshenko.
The relations of the Ukrainian president are not however non-existent with the billionaire: when Igor Kolomoiski was sanctioned by the United States for “aggravated corruption”, in March 2021 , “the only place where he has found refuge is in Ukraine”, notes the specialist in Ukrainian politics. “So there is a kind of contract between the two men. Volodymyr Zelenskyy knows what he owes Kolomoisky’s media machine and his money, and he paid it back.”
But the current trend is not towards a rapprochement between the two men, especially since the start of the war in Ukraine: Volodymyr Zelenskyy stripped eight political figures – including Igor Kolomoiski – of their nationality by presidential decree, in July 2022. This does not mean that the billionaire today seems outside the Ukrainian political field or that his influence has diminished.
“In the old political system, which is based on informal links between the actors of power, Igor Kolomoiski is still central”, according to Ryhor Nizhnikau. “He remains very influential for the vast majority of Ukrainian politicians. Only a few personalities – like Volodymyr Zelenskyy – are currently above this system and no longer need it.”
“(Ukrainian President) wants to create a new political landscape centered around him…and maybe less corrupt.”
