President’s Friend Tymur Mindich: From Kolomoiskyy’s Youngest Partner to Ukraine’s Shadow Curator

Tymur Mindich, long known in political and business circles, has come under scrutiny for his influence over Ukraine’s energy and defense sectors. Sources suggest he may be investigated by the FBI for potential money laundering involving offshore and British-registered companies, as well as individuals linked to him. Mindich’s name has also appeared in connection with past corruption at the Odesa Port Plant. Over the years, he has built close ties with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, maintained influence in government appointments, and played a role in defense projects, including the company Fire Point, which received major state contracts for drone production.

All the more so since the case is related to the energy sector, possibly based in part on the materials from our investigation “A French-Style Robbery.”

A few months ago, Ukrainska Pravda received information from influential sources within the American establishment that Tymur Mindich could become a subject of an official FBI investigation. It may concern money laundering.

The investigation reportedly involves not only Mindich himself but also several other individuals and companies. According to sources, U.S. law enforcement is examining an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands, a British-registered company, and a man known by the nickname “Sugarman.”

A similar surname — Tsukerman — was mentioned in investigations by MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak, particularly in connection with corruption at the Odesa Port Plant.

According to the MP, businessman Mykhailo Tsukerman and his associated companies appeared in the OPP’s affairs before the full-scale invasion. At that time, informal control of the state enterprise could have shifted from one co-founder of the Kvartal 95 studio, Serhii Shefir, to another — Tymur Mindich. This story might have remained local if its participants hadn’t scattered across the world.

Telethon – Mindich. Chernyshov – Mindich. Drones – Mindich. Missiles – Mindich. Energy – Mindich. Cabinet of Ministers – Mindich. Banks – Mindich.

Mindich — a surname that has been frequently heard in political circles for more than a year now.

A man who, from being the youngest partner and media asset holder of oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyi, appears to have transformed into one of the country’s shadow curators.

Of course, this would not have been possible without his friend Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who in 2019 found himself in the main office of the country — on Bankova Street. Nor without Russia’s full-scale invasion, which has put Ukraine’s democratic processes on hold indefinitely, including government accountability and transparency.

At present, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office neither confirm nor deny — in other words, do not comment on — the so-called “Mindich tapes.” Therefore, Ukrainska Pravda decided to tell the story of this friend of the president, whose name has been appearing in the media even more often since the start of attacks on anti-corruption institutions.

All the more so since, according to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources within the American establishment, the FBI has recently begun “taking a closer look” at Tymur Mindich’s activities. And just a few weeks ago, lights were once again seen on in Mindich’s apartment on 9a Hrushevskoho Street — the same one where wiretapping devices were discovered late this summer.

The Favorite

“The president could spend a weekend with him. Grill some kebabs. Switch off. Relax,” says one influential Ukrainian businessman, speaking off the record about Tymur Mindich’s relationship with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Timur is hotels, restaurants, suits,” adds a former political heavyweight, completing the picture of the president’s “favorite.”

It’s important to note that both Ukrainska Pravda’s interlocutors described Mindich’s role in the architecture of power as it was before the full-scale invasion.

“He was never really a player. He informally held part of Kolomoiskyi’s assets. Imported branded clothes into Ukraine. Made some side money, could turn to the president with a request, but that’s about it,” the first source adds.

According to UP’s business sources, it was Mindich who, at the start of Zelenskyy’s presidency, recommended Oleksii Chernyshov for the team: “They asked Timur about him. Timur said, ‘He’s a good guy.’”

Perhaps that explains the rapid career rise of the “good guy” Chernyshov — from head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration in 2019 to Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine in 2024.

Influential MPs told UP that Chernyshov also had strong ambitions to become prime minister. Together with Svyrydenko, he was considered for one of the top positions in the state whenever discussions arose about replacing Denys Shmyhal.

However, those plans were derailed in June 2025, when the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office charged him with abuse of office and receiving an unlawful benefit on a particularly large scale — a story UP reported on in detail earlier this year.

Interestingly, a year ago, when Mindich’s name began appearing more frequently in the context of various areas of state activity, opinions about his influence were divided.

Political figures emphasized that there had suddenly been “a lot of Mindich” in their lives. At the same time, businessmen often could not believe that a once inconspicuous “assistant” could grow into a player with political and media weight, capable of influencing entire sectors of the state.

In short, under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s 2021 draft law on de-oligarchization, Mindich of 2024 could almost unnoticed by the public fully meet the criteria for being defined as an “oligarch.”

Mindich’s name first appeared in the public sphere in 2019, when, at the end of the presidential campaign, candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy began using the businessman’s armored car.

Already at the beginning of 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, the author of this report managed to record Tymur Mindich visiting the president’s office three times. At that time, Zelenskyy’s friend said he had visited the head of the Office of the President and his friend Andriy Yermak:

“I came there to help and offer my assistance as a person, as a friend, as a citizen in connection with the coronavirus. I have experience organizing the delivery of packages, groceries, and so on.”

At the beginning of 2021, President Zelenskyy celebrated his birthday at Mindich’s apartment.

“The Kvartal 95 studio, together with Mr. Mindich, knowing I would be at home in my apartment on my birthday, prepared a surprise for me. They invited me to this apartment. I went up a few floors and went in. Yes, it was an amazing surprise,” President Zelenskyy told the author of this report at the time.

According to Ukrainska Pravda sources, it was in this apartment that NABU discovered a wiretap a few months ago.

At the end of the same year, 2021, Mindich was among the guests at the celebration of the Office of the President head Andriy Yermak’s anniversary at the state residence Synyohora in the Carpathians.

After the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, the government quarter was closed for security reasons. As a result, it became impossible to monitor whether Mindich visited the president’s office; the same applies to all celebrations and other contacts.

It was during this period, according to Ukrainska Pravda sources in political and business circles, that the “star” of Tymur Mindich — the president’s friend, who never held any official position but gained influence — rose above 9a Hrushevskoho Street.

Mindich 2.0

2024 became the year of Tymur Mindich’s full consolidation within Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s system of power, an influential Ukrainska Pravda source in business circles asserts:

“He started making a strong mark when he placed his people in the Cabinet of Ministers. He was actively inviting people to his home, proposing certain topics. There was a lot of him.”

President Zelenskyy no longer had any candidates in reserve for various positions. And it was then, in September 2024, that several individuals connected to the businessman received ministerial portfolios following a partial government reshuffle.

Tymur Mindich’s sphere of influence included the then-Minister of Energy Herman Halushchenko, Minister of Ecology Svitlana Hrynchuk, and Minister of Agrarian Policy Vitalii Koval. Notably, neither Halushchenko nor Hrynchuk disappeared after the next Cabinet reshuffle in mid-2025: Hrynchuk moved into Halushchenko’s former position, while Halushchenko transferred to the Ministry of Justice.

“Right now, in Ukraine, big money is made only in a few areas: defense (drones), energy, reconstruction, and call centers,” an influential businessman told UP off the record.

According to multiple UP sources in business, political, and law enforcement circles, Mindich is present in the first two sectors.

Indeed, 2024 became a “breakthrough” year for the defense company Fire Point, which began receiving billion-hryvnia state contracts for the production of long-range drones.

In November of last year alone, according to defense sector sources, two contracts worth more than 7 billion hryvnias were signed with a company linked to Tymur Mindich. UP sources in the defense sphere insist that the company received not only funding from the Ukrainian state budget but also funds from Western partners.

A month ago, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia published an interview with the company’s chief designer, Denys Shtilerman. In it, he explained the rapid growth as follows:

“Go and win open tests or some competitions, and then you will receive funding. If you have a successful case that works not on paper or in your dreams, but in reality, then you will get contracts.”

Shtilerman also denied that Mindich is the company’s true owner:

“Mindich’s influence on the company is zero; he is not a co-owner. Regarding his influence, he came to us after we won a test at the training ground. He was very interested in the company and expressed a desire to become a shareholder. But nothing came of it, because we refused him. We crossed paths in our personal matters, since we are both Jewish. But not in the company’s affairs at all.”

According to Ukrainska Pravda sources in law enforcement, in January 2025 the National Anti-Corruption Bureau sent an official request to Ukraine’s State Financial Monitoring Service to disclose the flow of funds for Fire Point. However, no results have been reported to date.

After information emerged about the company’s possible links to Mindich and the NABU investigation into potential overpricing of drones or individual components, UP sources in the defense sector report that the company’s management decided to “play it safe” and sell a stake in Fire Point to a buyer from Saudi Arabia.

Mindich’s influence on the country’s energy sector received further confirmation this summer, when NABU and the SAP detained the businessman’s relative, Leonid Mindich, while attempting to leave Ukraine. According to the investigation, in 2021 he personally oversaw the procurement of energy equipment at JSC Kharkivoblenergo and influenced the procurement of this equipment by other state enterprises in the energy sector.

UP interlocutors in political and business circles also emphasize that Mindich may have gained influence over the banking sector, including the state-nationalized Sense Bank, through the institution’s management.

For example, Mindich began communicating with one of the institution’s non-public overseers and advisor to the bank’s supervisory board chairman, Vasyl Veselyi. Coincidentally—or not—Veselyi’s family also acquired a stake in the country’s largest petrochemical enterprise, Karpatnaftokhim, in 2024, shortly after the company’s seizure had been lifted.

“After the information about the tapes surfaced, almost nothing changed. The Office of the President understands that something may be going on with Tymur, but they don’t believe that anything on the tapes, beyond casual conversations, could involve corruption. When could they be published? This year? Next year? Mindich calmly comes to Ukraine, showing that he has no legal problems,” says a source close to the President’s Office.

According to UP, Mindich recently visited Ukraine for the second time since the media reports about the tapes appeared and met with the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense, Kyrylo Budanov. Seeking to maintain his influence and position, Budanov has been actively trying to be useful to the President’s Office, both regarding the “Chernyshov issue” (it was the GUR that returned Chernyshov to Ukraine for the NABU summons) and a potential “Mindich issue.”

“There has been active circulation online of information that the Russians are supposedly hunting Mindich. Photos were published showing GUR representatives with members of some Serbian criminal group,” an influential law enforcement source told UP off the record.

Moreover, in all the numerous reports, the text was identical, claiming that “in Vienna, Austrian intelligence recorded a meeting between representatives of Ukrainian military intelligence and contacts from a Serbian criminal group… The GUR sent a special forces team to Vienna. The team included the commander of the elite Artan unit, former sniper Viktor Torkotiuk, known by the call sign ‘Titan.’ The team’s task was to do everything possible to cancel the ‘order’ and ensure Mindich’s safe return to Ukraine.”

“Within the President’s Office, they were tasked with figuring out what this disinformation was. It turned out that the GUR operatives themselves were spreading it, and the photos were theirs as well,” several UP sources within the law enforcement system confirmed.

“Make Mindich small again”

A few months ago, Ukrainska Pravda received information from influential sources within the American establishment that Tymur Mindich could become a subject of an official FBI investigation. It may concern money laundering.

The investigation reportedly involves not only Mindich himself but also several other individuals and companies. According to sources, U.S. law enforcement is examining an offshore company registered in the British Virgin Islands, a British-registered company, and a man known by the nickname “Sugarman.”

A similar surname — Tsukerman — was mentioned in investigations by MP Yaroslav Zhelezniak, particularly in connection with corruption at the Odesa Port Plant.

According to the MP, businessman Mykhailo Tsukerman and his associated companies appeared in the OPP’s affairs before the full-scale invasion, at the time when informal control over the state enterprise could have shifted from one co-owner of the Kvartal 95 studio, Serhiy Shefir, to another — Tymur Mindich. This story might have remained local if its participants hadn’t scattered across the world.

In April 2023, Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau announced the search for members of a criminal group accused of embezzling funds from the country’s largest chemical plant, JSC Odesa Port Plant.

“The criminal organization, led by the former head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, was uncovered on March 22, 2023, by NABU detectives under the procedural guidance of SAP prosecutors. Between 2019 and 2021, its members embezzled over 500 million UAH from JSC Odesa Port Plant and JSC United Mining and Chemical Company. At the same time, the total unlawful gains obtained by the criminal organization during its control of JSC OPP exceeded 2 billion UAH,” the official statement from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau said.

It later emerged that one of the suspects in this case — Oleksandr Horbunenkо — fled to the United States, where, coincidentally, the FBI would later become involved in his life.

Ukrainska Pravda examined the criminal case materials against Horbunenkо, which were reviewed in the U.S. Federal Court during 2024–2025. In particular, over 100 pages of materials from United States v. Oleksandr Horbunenkо are publicly available.

According to these materials, Horbunenkо arrived in the U.S. a few days before the start of the full-scale invasion, on February 15, 2022, on a tourist visa. In April of the same year, he applied for temporary protection, apparently due to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and was granted it.

In 2023, NABU announced Horbunenkо wanted, and just a few months later, the suspect in Ukraine applied to the U.S. to extend his refugee status, yet did not disclose in the documents that Ukrainian law enforcement had questions for him.

NABU and the SAP informed the U.S. equivalent of the immigration service, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), that Horbunenkо was a suspect and could be in Florida.

On October 3, 2024, HSI Agent Ihor Demidov located and questioned Horbunenkо in Miami. At the beginning of 2025, Horbunenkо’s refugee status was revoked. Subsequently, Agent Demidov filed a criminal complaint with the court, and Judge Enjolique Lett signed an arrest warrant.

The very next day, Horbunenkо suddenly prepared to fly to what is considered the world’s best extradition-proof hideout — Dubai — but did not make it. On April 17, 2025, he was arrested right at the airport. He explained that he had planned to “return,” but was taken into custody.

According to Ukrainska Pravda sources in law enforcement, while in custody, Horbunenkо was approached by representatives of NABU and the SAP for an official interrogation.

During one of these interactions, questions were raised specifically about Tymur Mindich. Suddenly, FBI agents removed Horbunenkо from custody, and instead of deportation, fines, or imprisonment, he was released and placed under protection. This may indicate that Horbunenkо agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities.

“Horbunenkо could have laundered money, like all other participants in the OPP scheme. Therefore, it is clear that he may be of interest to federal authorities not only in the context of Mindich, but also regarding other influential users of money legalization schemes,” said one member of the Ukrainian law enforcement system.

The last entry in the publicly available materials in this case is dated July 26, 2025. Coincidentally, this was precisely the period when the President’s Office, with the help of parliament, was attempting to undermine the independence of NABU and SAP.

Between Ukraine and Israel

Most sources interviewed by the editorial team emphasize that Mindich may have reached the peak of his influence during the full-scale invasion. Events surrounding his sway over the Odesa Port Plant in 2021 and the adventures of his relative Leonid at Kharkivoblenergo were only the beginning of this meteoric rise.

Some discussions and meetings during Shabbat took place even before Russia’s invasion in February 2022, but few participants at the time fully realized the scale of their potential.

“Tymur is a good organizer. He has direct access to the president. But he never had large sums of money, and he was never an independent actor,” recalls one influential member of the informal Privat group, which effectively ceased to exist after Ihor Kolomoiskyi’s arrest at the end of 2023.

In September of this year, according to UP sources in business circles, Mindich celebrated his birthday in Israel. By mid-October, he returned to Kyiv, only to later travel to Israel again.

Did the July attack on NABU and SAP affect investigations into the president’s circle? Will the recordings made in Mindich’s apartment ever be published? Most importantly, did Mindich exercise control over Ukraine’s energy sector and influence the defense heavyweight, the company Fire Point? Did he act independently or with approval from above? And will he return to Ukraine in the near future, or wait out potential blackouts abroad?

The only certainty as of now: Tymur Mindich remains the most low-profile yet most connected businessman to the country’s authorities, with only a few photos online.

Tymur Mindich has not responded to Ukrainska Pravda’s requests for comment.

Tymur Mindich remains a co-owner of the studio Kvartal 95.