The suspects in the Midas case had been gathering intelligence on dozens of people including journalists, ministers and their deputies, and Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) employees, reports Ukrinform, citing a statement by National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) representatives made at a Committee on Anti-Corruption Policy meeting.
“… I also ask the MPs to respond and not to remain silent as ‘Rockets’ and ‘Tenors’ collect intel on law enforcers, including SBU employees in this case. That is, this group was collecting intel on the SBU as well. I think this will be of interest to them, too. This means they [SBU] may have been a nuisance for this group for some reason – some SBU officers, this is another possibility,” said NABU Director Semen Kryvonos.
Oleksandr Abakumov, chief detective at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, clarified that the intelligence gathering targeted 9 SBU employees. He added that the files discovered on the data carriers seized during the investigation featured similar ‘dossiers’ on 16 current MPs, including the head of the Verkhovna Rada’s anti-corruption committee, Anastasia Radina, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, and others.
“[There is intel] on 18 ministers or deputy ministers holding postitions mostly in the energy sector or the Ministry of Justice; on 10 journalists, including Yuriy Nikolov and the late [Oleksa] Shalaiskyi and the rest of the journalists covering corruption in the energy sector and elsewhere; on the former head of Ukrenergo, etc.,” said the NABU chief detective.
He reported that law enforcers observed a shift in the criminal organisation’s “influence areas” or “areas of interest” following the Cabinet of Ministers changes, with the Ministry of Justice becoming the new target.
“That’s when we see the appearance of dossiers on the Justice Minister’s deputies, on [officials working in] specialized areas such as the State Bailiff Service, enforcement of sentences, plus, most importantly, experts,” emphasized Abakumov. According to his data, these files also contain several profiles on experts from the Bokarius Institute and others.
“Accordingly, we understand that these profiles were most likely made to have information about the experts on hand and to have influence opportunities,” Abakumov said.
NABU revealed that the defendants in the Midas case had collected a total of 527 dossiers on various influential people in the country.
“These 527 files feature 15 NABU detectives personally involved in investigations in the energy sector, the law enforcement sector, and in other high-profile investigations,” he said.
The NABU chief detective pointed out that some of the files had been created on 17 July 2025 – before the searches targeting NABU employees.
“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that so-called profiles or reference cards on several employees who later received suspicion notices from other law enforcement bodies were created on 17 July. In particular, I would like to state that these documents featured Ruslan Maghamedrasulov (17 July), Vitaliy Tibekin, also notified of suspicion later (17 July), Yevhen Tokar (17 July),” Abakumov noted.
As Ukrinform reports, NABU announced a special operation to expose corruption in the energy sector on 10 November 2025. The investigation revealed that the persons involved in a criminal organisation had built a large-scale scheme to influence strategic state-sector enterprises such as Energoatom.
Law enforcement operatives detained five of the seven suspects. These included a businessman whom the investigation considers the head of the criminal organisation, a former advisor to the Minister of Energy, and Energoatom’s executive director for physical protection and security.
Suspicion notices were issued to businessman, Kvartal-95 studio co-founder Timur Mindich (code name “Carlson” on NABU tapes), former advisor to the Minister of Energy, Ihor Myroniuk (“Rocket”), Energoatom’s executive director for security, Dmytro Basov (“Tenor”), and four “employees” of the so-called “money laundering back office”, including Oleksandr Zukerman (“Sugarman”), Ihor Fursenko (“Ryoshik”), Lesya Ustymenko, and Lyudmyla Zorina. Five people from the list of suspects have been detained. Two, Timur Mindich and Oleksandr Zukerman, have left Ukraine.