Political satirist and leading presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy sent a representative to meet with the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, on April 3, journalists from the Nashi Groshi investigative project revealed in a program broadcast on Ukrainian television on April 8.
Adding to the intrigue, the representative was Andriy Bohdan, a lawyer linked to Ihor Kolomoisky, the billionaire oligarch believed to be backing Zelenskiy in the election.
Zelenskiy’s election team has denied Bohdan plays any role in the campaign, saying Zelenskiy and Bohdan are simply old friends. However, Nashi Groshi journalists say they have spotted Bohdan’s car near Zelenskiy’s campaign headquarters in Kyiv’s Pechersk District several times.
Bohdan was Kolomoisky’s adviser in 2014 when the oligarch served as a governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In 2016, Bohdan represented Kolomoysky’s ally, Hennadiy Korban, in court. Korban was prosecuted on number of charges in 2015-2016, including kidnapping and organized crime but received a suspended sentence of 1.5 years after making a plea bargain.
Nashi Groshi also revealed that in 2018 Bogdan made 20 trips from Kyiv to Geneva, where Kolomoisky then lived. And last December Bohdan traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel, where Kolomoisky currently lives, along with Zelenskiy and members of his Kvartal 95 comedy show, spending four days there.
Zelenskiy announced his run for the presidency on Dec. 31.
During the 30-minute meeting on April 3, Bohdan talked with Artem Sytnyk, the head of NABU. Vitaliy Shabunin, a chairman of Anti-Corruption Action Center, who attended the meeting as a neutral, told the journalists of Nashi Groshi that the meeting had been initiated by Zelensky’s team.
The Nashi Groshi journalists noted that the NABU is currently conducting several investigations into Kolomoisky. They include a case of alleged embezzlement at the state-run Ukrnafta oil company, which used to be controlled by Kolomoisky, a case on money laundering at PrivatBank, which Kolomoisky had owned until 2016, when the government nationalized it to save it from collapse, and a probe into the massive debts of Kolomoisky’s Ukraine International Airlines aviation company to the state.
Bohdan didn’t reply to the requests for comment on the meeting from the Kyiv Post.
Kyiv Post staff writer Bermet Talant contributed reporting to the story
