This matter is surprising given the role the billionaire played in the political rise of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What is Ihor Kolomoisky accused of?
Regis Genté *: The Ukrainian security services suspect him of having withdrawn more than half a billion hryvnias, or 12 million euros, abroad between 2013 and 2020. The judge ordered Mr. Kolomoisky’s arrest in the courtroom. According to his lawyer, the oligarch wants to appeal. The facts mentioned are hardly surprising since Mr. Kolomoisky has been frequently accused in the recent past of creating corruption schemes that were extremely profitable for him, particularly in sectors such as petroleum products or metallurgy.
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So that would mean that this court decision would be more political?
It’s hard to say, but we tend to believe it. For example, if we look at the search he was subjected to last February for possible embezzlement of 40 billion hryvnias (one billion euros), the country’s political observers said that this was primarily a question of the Ukrainian authorities especially to show seriousness in the fight against corruption, at a time when Kiev demanded weapons, especially tanks, from its Western partners. Americans and Europeans who could not make up their minds because of the reservations of their public opinion.
The oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky was one of the three richest people in Ukraine and the sulphurous owner of 1+1, the private television in which Zelenskyy became a small-screen star. He supported and financed the former comedian’s presidential candidacy.
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Today, when we look closely at what this court decision means, it is primarily because Mr. Kolomoisky played a key role in the political rise of Volodymyr Zelensky in 2019, which, let us remember, was; Actor. On his television channel, Mr. Zelensky burst onto the political scene with a series called “Servant of the People,” in which he played the role of a junior high school teacher who suddenly became president of the republic. And the first two years of Zelensky’s presidency, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, were marked, among other things, by the president’s apparent desire to protect Mr. Kolomoisky.
In his daily report on Saturday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy also seemed to make an indirect allusion to this affair with these words. “For those who plundered Ukraine and put themselves above the law and all rules, there will undoubtedly be no more decades of the status quo (…) The law must work,” he said.
* Régis Genté is our regional correspondent in Eastern Europe. Volodymyr Zelensky, In the Mind of a Hero, co-written with Stéphane Siohan, was published in 2022 by Robert Laffont.