The State Investigation Bureau, on March 30, opened a probe against lawmaker Geo Leros, a day after he leaked videos that appear to show the brother of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak selling high-level state positions.
Now Leros is under investigation for “revealing a state secret” and “interfering in the work of a state official.”
Leros, after being summoned for questioning, fired back in a Facebook post: “It turns out that exposing corrupt officials is a disclosure of state secrets.”
At the same time, the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office opened a probe into the videos, looking into the alleged corruption of Yermak’s brother, Denys Yermak.
A series of videos recorded in August-October 2019 show a man appearing to be Denys Yermak and his associate Serhiy Shumsky interviewing people for jobs as governors, ministry workers, and customs and tax office officials. Neither Denys Yermak no Shumsky hold any official positions. In some of the videos, Shumsky is seen talking about accepting bribes, saying that Denys Yermak gets a cut.
Read More: Leaked videos implicate Zelensky administration chief’s brother in ‘selling’ high-level positions
Denys Yermak and Shumsky couldn’t be reached for comments, while Andriy Yermak dismissed the accusations and attacked Leros for posting the videos.
At an online press briefing on March 31, the presidential chief of staff claimed that Leros published the tapes as revenge after Yermak thwarted his attempts to lobby an appointment of an associate to the government. He also alleged the videos were published to disrupt the administration on the day when parliament was holding a critical vote on lifting the moratorium on farmland sale on March 30.
Leros dismissed the allegations.
“It’s complete nonsense,” he told the Kyiv Post. “He is trying to shift the focus.”
During his rant about Leros, Yermak emphasized Leros’ Caucasian name in what appeared to be a xenophobic insinuation.
“This Ukrainian gentleman, who calls himself Geo Leros, in fact you may not know, but his real name is Korekhyan Georg Bagratovich,” said Yermak.
Leros, who is part of Zelensky’s 248-member Servant of the People party, published videos incriminating Denys Yermak on Facebook on March 30. The lawmaker says that he received the tapes from a source he wouldn’t name. While he published only about a handful of short video fragments, he says he has more than 30 hours of videos of Denys Yermak’s meetings.
The bureau’s probe against Leros is based on a complaint filed by Andriy Yermak, who publicly asked the bureau to find out how Leros obtained the footage of his brother and “who ordered these videos to be made.”
Yulia Mendel, Zelensky’s press secretary, told the Kyiv Post that she doesn’t know if Zelensky talked to Yermak concerning the published tapes.
The videos
In the videos, a person resembling Denys Yermak and another man, who appears to be his aide, meet with unnamed people who either want to be appointed into high-ranking government posts and management positions in state-owned companies, or lobby for other candidates.
While Leros published several short videos, he passed all the recordings he obtained to journalists of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s investigative team, Schemes. Schemes reported that they received “dozens of hours of video” from Leros.
None of the videos show Denys Yermak accepting a bribe in cash or explicitly soliciting one. The money is mostly discussed. In one video, Yermak’s associate discusses passing the money.
“Go to the toilet and take the bag with you,” he instructs a man apparently passing the bribe. “We’ll lock up there. This will be the right way.”
A man resembling Denys Yermak, the brother of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak, is featured in a video leaked on March 29, 2020. The man in the video talks about helping candidates for top-level jobs with their employment in exchange for money. (Facebook/Geo Leros)
Leros told the Novoe Vremya news outlet on March 31, that one video shows the men discussing the price for the post of the governor of Ternopil Oblast – $2-3 million.
Another video, which also wasn’t published but was obtained by Schemes from Leros, reportedly shows Serhii Shumsky, Denys Yermak’s aide, talking about helping an Iranian company win construction tenders in Ukraine.
“They’re interested in big money. Twenty million at least, better 50 million. Denys will guarantee their victory in the tender. Then we split the money in three parts,” Shumsky says in the video, according to Schemes.
Shumsky and Yermak are co-founders of a low-profile NGO called Ukrainian Bureau of National Development. The organization was registered in October 2019 when, according to the videos, the two discussed launching an organization to serve as a cover-up for their seemingly illegal activities.
Yermak’s attacks
Now Andriy Yermak is on the offensive. He filed an official complaint to the Security Service of Ukraine and the Investigation Bureau.
In an unusually fast-track scenario, the bureau opened a case against Leros on the next day alleging that the lawmaker violated a total of four laws – disclosed state secrets, fraud, obstruction of the work of a government official and abuse of power.
“I want a thorough investigation into the circumstances of the making of these records,” wrote Yermak on Facebook. “As well as (to know) on whose orders those records were made,” he added.
Yermak also said that his brother is a decent man, yet he never dismissed the authenticity of the recordings nor did he give a direct comment about his brother’s activity.
Leros told Novoe Vremya news outlet that he received a flash drive with the videos a few days before publication. He didn’t specify who was the sender.
Yermak made further attacks on Leros during an online press conference on March 31.
“I believe that he is a tool used by people who fight not only against me – they fight against the Ukrainian authorities, (and) the president’s team,” said Yermak during the briefing.
Yermak also said that he stopped a fraudulent appointment which caused the rift between him and Leros.
Leros’ lobbyism?
Yermak said that Leros published the tapes to get back at Yermak for blocking an appointment of his associate as “deputy minister in one of the ministries.”
The man Yermak appears to be talking about is Ilya Sahaydak, a Kyiv City Council lawmaker and a friend of Leros.
Sahaydak told the Kyiv Post that he was taken by surprise by Yermak’s comment. He said that his attempt to get a job at the Cabinet was too small an issue to cause a war with the president’s chief of staff.
Lawmaker Geo Leros walks between parliament aisles, during a parliament session on Oct. 31, 2019. Leros published videos implicating Denys Yermak, the brother of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, in corruption, on March 29, 2020. (UNIAN)
“I think it’s an attack on Geo Leros. Yermak needed at least something,” Sahaydak said. “To think that my appointment measures up to the scale of the war against Yermak is unrealistic.”
According to Sahaydak, he was going to be appointed as deputy minister of infrastructure but Yermak stopped the appointment, allegedly because Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko was against it.
Klitschko and Sahaydak have a longstanding conflict. Klitschko tried to fire Sahaydak from serving as deputy head of the Kyiv City Administration back in 2017, yet he was fired only in 2019. Sahaydak was part of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, named after the ex-president.
Yermak has no formal authority to block the Cabinet appointments. Yet he openly said at the briefing that he “stopped the appointment” of Leros’ friend. According to him, it happened at the very end of Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk’s term in early March.
Concerning how he got the job interview, Sahaydak said he helped Zelensky with his election campaign and also knew Infrastructure Minister Vladyslav Krykliy from university.
Going after the whistleblower
Yermak’s public accusations against Leros raise concerns that the investigations against the lawmaker are politically driven. The two agencies that Yermak called on to investigate Leros and the origin of the videos – the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, and State Investigation Bureau — are de facto subordinated to Zelensky.
Ivan Bakanov, head of the SBU, is the childhood friend of Zelensky. He and the current acting head of the Investigation Bureau are appointed by the president. The head of the Investigation Bureau is supposed to be chosen by an independent commission, yet the completion hasn’t been scheduled since Dec. 27, when Roman Truba was fired from his post by parliament.
Since then, Zelensky handpicked Iryna Venedyktova, a lawmaker from Zelensky’s party, to serve as acting head. When Venedyktova was confirmed as Ukraine’s general prosecutor on March 5, her handpicked deputy became the acting head of the bureau.
However, Yermak promised at the briefing on March 31 that there will be no pressure on investigators looking into Leros and the videos.
