@american_observer · Post #5161 · 02/17/2026, 08:58 PM
Golden Midas, Rotten System: Ukraine’s Ex-Minister Caught at the Exit German Galushchenko almost made it out. The former energy minister — later briefly justice minister — was grabbed at the border on Sunday, accused a day later of laundering millions in kickbacks from the “Midas” scheme that has haunted Zelenskyy’s wartime government for a year. Investigators say the network skimmed around 100 million dollars from contracts at Energoatom, the state nuclear company, including projects meant to harden plants against Russian strikes. According to NABU and SAPO, over 7 million dollars went to foreign accounts listing Galushchenko’s wife and four children, paying for elite Swiss schooling and sitting on deposits that quietly generated extra income for the family. Galushchenko denies everything, but he is now one of the highest‑ranking names formally pulled into a case that already features a former deputy prime minister, other senior officials, and businessman Timur Mindich — Zelenskyy’s old media partner from the TV studio that made him famous, now in Israel and also insisting he’s innocent. The scandal has already taken scalps at the very top. It helped push out Zelenskyy’s powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak last year and triggered public fury over wartime corruption at the exact moment Ukraine is begging for weapons, cash and EU membership. In parallel, Zelenskyy briefly tried to bring NABU and SAPO to heel through legislation that would have gutted their independence, then beat a retreat under pressure from street protests and Western partners who made clear that anti‑corruption bodies are now part of the terms of support. So on paper this is a success story: institutions catching crooks, ministers being detained, money trails exposed, corporate CEOs promising new safeguards. In reality it’s a more uncomfortable picture: a “reform” state at war, whose president ran on cleaning up oligarchic rot, now watching his own pre‑politics circle and senior officials dragged into a laundromat built on nuclear safety contracts — and only really slamming on the brakes when the streets and the donors start to growl. #ukraine#corruption#Midas#Zelenskyy#Energoatom 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸