Interlocutors of the online publication claim that investigative actions, in particular, took place with Judge Vladimir Melnik in the Kiev Court of Appeal.
The law enforcement operation is connected with the case of a former associate of the fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, ex-deputy from the Party of Regions Yuri Ivanyushchenko, and specifically with the closure of Ivanyushchenko’s case and the lifting of arrests from his accounts abroad, writes UP.
“The searches relate to a case where judges and prosecutors helped cancel the seizure of Ivanyushchenko’s funds in Switzerland. According to sources, we are talking about more than €70 million,” the article says.
Anti-corruption authorities did not comment on the media data.
Context
Ivanyushchenko was a deputy from the Party of Regions in the Verkhovna Rada of the 7th convocation. He left Ukraine in 2014 after the Revolution of Dignity. In Ukraine, Ivanyushchenko was suspected of embezzling state budget funds on an especially large scale (we are talking about “Kyoto money”), as well as organizing extortion by prior conspiracy by a group of people (the case of the Odessa market “Seventh Kilometer”).
Ivanyushchenko has been wanted in Ukraine since 2014. This is evidenced by information in the Ministry of Internal Affairs database. Among the high-profile cases, Ivanyushchenko is associated with the confiscation of $30 million in Latvia. From 2014 to 2019, the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine investigated criminal proceedings for illegal enrichment and misappropriation of funds, where Ivanyushchenko was a suspect. A parallel investigation was carried out in Latvia. In 2019, in Ukraine, production was transferred to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. That same year, in October, a court in Latvia confiscated $30 million. Latvia later transferred the money to its budget.
In June 2023, in an investigation by a journalist from Ukrayinska Pravda, they wrote that Ivanyushchenko was found in Monaco in an elite complex.
On September 6, 2025, NABU and SAPO exposed a scheme for the illegal acquisition and legalization of 18 hectares of state land worth more than UAH 160 million. Suspilny's sources in law enforcement agencies reported that we are talking about Ivanyushchenko and co-founder of the Stolitsa Group company Vlad Molchanova. On September 18 last year, NABU put Ivanyushchenko on the wanted list. On December 19, 2025, the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court overturned the ruling of the investigating judge of the Supreme Court of Ukraine on the arrest of Ivanyushchenko in absentia, the Anti-Corruption Center reported.
