Unknown attackers have destroyed a motorcycle and damaged a car belonging to two men who exposed the alleged involvement of Presidential Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak’s brother in a scheme to sell state offices for money.
In March, Geo Leros, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, published videos that appeared to show brother Denys Yermak considering candidates for government jobs and discussing receiving money from some of them. The ensuing scandal came to be colloquially known as “YermakGate.”
In April, Serhii Shumsky and Dmytro Shtanko, Denys Yermak’s partners in the alleged graft scheme, said in an interview with the Bihus.info investigative journalism project that the chief of staff’s brother had received payments from candidates for state jobs. Shtanko also said that Andriy Yermak himself was implicated in the scheme and received money as well.
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.
The Yermak brothers did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
On May 12, Shumsky and Shtanko told TheBabel news site that unknown individuals burned Shtanko’s motorcycle and threw a hand grenade into Shumsky’s car during the previous night. Both men connected the incidents to their interview with Bihus.info, where they accused both Yermak brothers of graft. Police spokesperson Oksana Blyshchyk told the Kyiv Post the Kyiv police is investigating a case into damage caused to the vehicles.
Shtanko said he had called the police and published video footage from surveillance cameras that showed a man burning the motorcycle.
Shumsky said the police told him that a young man wearing black clothes and a balaclava had broken the glass of his car’s window and thrown a grenade inside. However, the grenade failed to explode.
“Such actions will have the opposite effect: They won’t make us keep silent,” Shumsky said.
A video of an unknown man burning Dmytro Shtanko’s motorcycle (Babel).
Accomplices’ background
Bihus.info and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Schemes investigative show previously identified Shtanko as the person who filmed the leaked videos of Denys Yermak discussing appointments to state jobs. Shtanko’s face appears on screen in a way that suggests he is behind the camera. However, in his interview with Bihus.info, he denied being the cameraman.
Shumsky and Shtanko said they fell out with Denys Yermak when the candidates who paid for government jobs did not receive the jobs and Yermak started ignoring them.
The two men also confirmed meetings in which Denys Yermak discussed cracking down on the business of Danish logistics company MAERSK and Ukrainian logistics firm TIS.
In the videos, Yermak says that he needs to do this to advance the interests of KTL Ukraine, a local subsidiary of Turkish logistics company Kinay. KTL Ukraine denied cooperating with Yermak in the alleged scheme.
“The Turks are ready to pay us $300,000 or 300,000 euros every month,” a person identified by Bihus.info as Shumsky said in the videos.
A video of Serhiy Shumsky’s damaged car (Babel).
Case buried?
Meanwhile, in April, Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky’s office transferred the corruption case against Denys Yermak from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) to the police.
The move prompted whistleblower Leros to allege that Kholodnytsky was trying to bury the case. Kholodnytsky’s office declined to comment on why the case had been transferred and the accusations of sabotage.
Of all Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, NABU is seen as the most independent. Anti-graft activists view Kholodnytsky and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov’s police as more politicized and susceptible to corruption.
