MOSCOW, November 17. /TASS/. Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council and former Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has extended his foreign visit amid reports about his possible involvement in the high-profile corruption scandal gripping his government, a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, or parliament, said.
"Umerov’s official trip was to be completed yesterday. He has extended it until November 19. Well, Rustem, we are waiting," Alexey Goncharenko (designated as terrorist and extremist in Russia) wrote on his Telegram channel.
A number of Telegram channels had reported that Umerov refused to return to Ukraine.
Umerov said earlier that on November 11, or a day after the anticorruption investigation into the Mindich case was made public, that he was in Istanbul "for new meetings on the issues of prisoner exchanges," although neither Ukraine nor Russia had announced such talks.
Umerov’s name surfaced in connection with the Mindich case as, according to investigators, being the defense minister, he let Mindich interfere into the defense sphere.
Goncharenko voiced doubts that amid this scandal Umerov will return to Ukraine. From Turkey, he set off for Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Mindich case
On November 10, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO), both independent from Zelensky’s office, announced an investigation into a major corruption scheme in the energy sector, dubbed Operation Midas. Searches were conducted at the Energoatom energy company and the residences of entrepreneur Timur Mindich and the now suspended Justice Minister German Galushchenko, who served as the country’s energy minister at the time of the events that are being looked into. The investigation found that participants in the scheme had laundered around $100 million. NABU also started to release recordings of conversations from Mindich’s apartment, which revealed discussions of corrupt practices.
On November 11, along with Mindich, charges in the case were brought against former Deputy Prime Minister and former Minister of National Unity Alexey Chernyshov, who is also seen as a member of Zelensky’s inner circle. On the same day, Ukraine’s government dissolved Energoatom’s board, and on November 12, Galushchenko and Energy Minister Svetlana Grinchuk tendered their resignation. However, Mindich, who some have called Zelensky’s "wallet," left the country a few hours before searches started, and is now in Israel.