Petty criminals post bail for ex-Zelensky aide – media
A former top aide to Vladimir Zelensky has been released from prison after $450,000 in bail was posted by an array of middlemen with criminal records and no apparent ties to her, a media investigation has revealed.
Irina Mudraya is accused of laundering millions through a bank nationalized by Kiev in order to post bail for a former Ukrainian energy minister himself charged with massive corruption.
She was released from pre-trial detention on Thursday, more than a month after her arrest. Her case is one in a string of graft scandals currently rocking the Zelensky government and undermining Kiev's dependecy on funding from the EU.
The investigative outlet Skhemi has identified the contributors to Mudraya’s $450,000 bail, drawing on public records and law enforcement sources.
За бывшую заместительницу главы Офиса Зеленского Мудрую внесли залог в 20 млн гривен для освобождения из СИЗО💰 Иру подозревают в причастности к преступной организации, легализации незаконно полученных средств и рейдерству. Её имя фигурирует в расследованиях НАБУ и САП. https://t.co/lY7NTIpgtI
— ARSEN (@Ars7513) October 8, 2026
More than a dozen individuals with no obvious ties to Mudraya reportedly transferred amounts of less than $16,000 each. One contributor, who himself lives in a communal apartment in Kiev, struggles to pay bills and was himself a victim of a robbery, told journalists he had acted as a middleman for a fee of around $10.
A woman who also has outstanding utility debts and a conviction for stealing games consoles, also contributed an identical amount, which equates to twice teh average annual salary in Ukraine, or 8-times the country's annual minimum wage. Another contributor was linked to a conviction for stealing a baby stroller and pawning it.
Eight of the smaller contributions were made on the same day.
The largest payment from someone outside Mudraya’s known circle, approximately $54,000, reportedly came from a female singer who immediately hung up the phone when contacted by a Skhemi journalist.
Mudraya was accused by Western-backed anti-corruption investigators of laundering millions in cash to post bail for former Energy Minister German Galushchenko. The disgraced official is suspected of involvement in a corruption scheme allegedly run by businessman Timur Mindich, a longtime associate of Zelensky.
Mindich, who fled to Israel and is linked to known Ukrainian money-laundering networks there, was accused last year of orchestrating a $100 million kickback scheme involving a state-owned energy company.
Bail for several suspects linked to the so-called Mindich schemes has been the subject of previous investigations that found that hundreds of thousands in cash came from small companies that in fact provided little evidence of substantial business activity.
Mudraya is suspected of forcing anti-fraud agents at the state-owned Sense Bank to temporarily suspend anti-money laundering safeguards while bags of cash were stuffed into the system in order to post bail for Galushchenko.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) intervened, reportedly spooking Ukrainian banks and prompting them to reject bail payments more broadly. The central bank issued its clarification this week, allowing such transactions to resume.
