Two people featured in videos implicating the brother of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak in alleged graft have confirmed the authenticity of the videos.
The videos were published by Geo Leros, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party. They show the chief of staff’s brother Denys considering candidates for government jobs and discussing receiving money from some of them.
Serhii Shumsky and Dmytro Shtanko, Denys Yermak’s alleged partners in the graft schemes, said in an April 8 interview with the Bihus.info investigative journalism project that the chief of staff’s brother had received payments from candidates for state jobs. Shtanko said that Denys Yermak had gotten about $100,000.
Shtanko also said that Andriy Yermak himself was implicated in the scheme and received money as well.
The President’s Office and the Yermak brothers did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Previously, the Yermak brothers did not deny the authenticity of the videos, but Denys Yermak claimed they were taken out of context. Andriy Yermak also dismissed the accusations and lashed out at Leros, promising to sue him.
Interviewees’ background
Shtanko said that he was a lawyer and that he worked at the interior ministry for 16 years until 2014.
Bihus.info and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Schemes investigative show previously identified him as the person who filmed the videos, because his face appears on screen in a way that suggests he is behind the camera. However, in his interview with Bihus.info, he denied filming the videos.
Shumsky, an aide to Denys Yermak, said he had been an agent of the Security Service of Ukraine since 2015 and had worked at the Interior Ministry before that. However, he claimed his professional activities had nothing to do with his cooperation with the Yermak brothers.
Shumsky and Shtanko said the scheme had been launched last summer, when Andriy Yermak was an aide to Zelensky. They claimed they had benevolent intentions — to hire professional candidates for state jobs.
To that end, the Institute for Strategic Research, a non-governmental organization run by Yermak, was expected to prepare expert assessments for projects that were supposed to be carried out by the candidates when they were appointed.
However, Shtanko said that, eventually, the money was paid not only for the expert assessments, but for the state jobs themselves, and these were under-the-table payments rather than “official” ones.
Bribery
Shtanko said that “there was a clear rule: People were not accepted without paying money.”
“If a person wants to be part of the team, wants to be appointed and has a project, he must agree to pay money to confirm his serious attitude to the project,” he said. “…Investigators should determine whether this was bribery or not.”
Shtanko said Denys Yermak told him that the candidates who paid him would first become acting heads of relevant agencies and state firms and then he would make sure they win competitions for permanent state jobs.
Shtanko said that Andriy Yermak had received $10,000 for the appointment of Oleksandr Lutsky to the State Geography and Cadastre Service. He claimed he heard Denys Yermak talk to Andriy Yermak about that.
Shtanko said he had issued a receipt for the money to Lutsky and other candidates. Lutsky did not respond to a request for comment.
Shumsky and Shtanko also confirmed that Denys Yermak had met with former lawmaker Volodymyr Kupchak. According to footage published by Bihus.info, Yermak and his entourage discuss selling the job of state nuclear monopoly Energoatom’s CEO to Kupchak.
“There are different tasks: for example, building a corruption system,” Kupchak says in the video. “I can do that based on my field of activities.”
Kupchak ultimately did not get the job. He could not be reached for comment.
Shumsky and Shtanko said they had fallen out with Denys Yermak when candidates who paid for government jobs did not receive the jobs and Yermak started ignoring them.
Chief of staff implicated?
Shtanko said that Denys Yermak had constantly talked to his brother Andriy about their negotiations with candidates. Shumsky said the whole scheme had been initiated by Andriy Yermak.
Shumsky said he had become acquainted with Andriy Yermak at the chief of staff’s brother’s house one week after Zelensky’s victory in the April 21, 2019 presidential election.
Shtanko and Shumsky claimed that the appointments of the candidates had been planned for the time after Andriy Yermak was expected to replace Andriy Bohdan as Zelensky’s chief of staff. He got the job in February, but they said they had known about his future appointment beforehand in 2019.
MAERSK scandal
Shumsky and Shtanko also confirmed meetings in which Denys Yermak discussed cracking down on the business of Danish logistics company MAERSK and Ukrainian logistics firm TIS.
Yermak says in the videos that he needs to do this to promote the interests of KTL Ukraine, a local subsidiary of Turkish logistics company Kinay. Yermak used to work for KTL Ukraine.
“The Turks are ready to pay us $300,000 or 300,000 euros every month,” a person identified by Bihus.info as Shumsky said, according to the videos.
KTL Ukraine denied cooperating with Yermak in the alleged scheme.
