Ukraine’s acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week fired the deputy head of his Office of the President (OP), Iryna Mudra. She was deputy to Kyrylo Budanov, the powerful former head of the Military Intelligence Directorate, presently the head of the OP. She was dumped on August 19, hours after Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) searched several homes and offices, including that of Mudra. She had specialized in international justice initiatives, which meant that she used her background in law and banking to try to figure out how to seize Russian assets.
NABU’s present investigation is of new corruption in an attempt to cover up last year’s corruption. Various media accounts describe NABU’s investigation as of an OP scheme to cover the $3.36 million bail for last year’s Justice Minister Herman Haluschenko. The latter had been arrested for a kickback scheme in the energy sector (which also involved the fugitive Tymur Mindich). It is reported that Zelenskyy assigned the Haluschenko matter to Budanov, and that his deputy Mudra was pulling together $3.36 million in cash. Yet, there’s not really anything new in all of this.
