Inside the bunker: How a Zelensky aide struggled to explain away corruption

The Ukrainian leader’s inner circle was frantically trying to cover up extravagant purchases made while the rest of the country suffered A senior official in Vladimir Zelensky’s office frantically tried to reconcile her official annual salary of $12,500 with what surveillance records suggest was $30,000 per month in cash payments received from her new boss , a former head of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence (HUR), according to a new investigation.

In records published by veteran investigative journalist Vladimir Boyko, Irina Mudraya, a former deputy justice minister serving as deputy head of Zelensky’s office, allegedly confided in her property magnate accomplice: “Who will ever believe me that I live on 50,000 hryvnia [$1,100] a month? Who?” Excerpts from a printout of purported NABU records of Irina Mudraya and Maksim Mikitas. © Telegram / volodymyrboyko Mudraya was fired in August after being accused of laundering millions through Ukraine’s banking system to bail out one of Zelensky’s energy ministers, who himself had been arrested in a separate case involving the Ukrainian leader’s long-time associate Timur Mindich.

Boyko has been publishing pages of what he says are transcripts of surveillance recordings produced by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) between January and June as detectives followed Mudraya and her partner, former MP Maksim Mikitas.

Who is tasked with countering corruption in Kiev? NABU and its sister agency, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), established after the armed coup of 2014, have repeatedly clashed with Zelensky’s cabal.

Last year, the Ukrainian leader attempted to place them under his control, but reversed course after Western donors threatened to suspend all aid.

Read more Ukrainian officials stole $3 million from Polish gift to Kiev – investigators (PHOTOS) Most recently the agencies exposed a massive scam-call center protection racket that was run through the office of Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, who then fled abroad under the false pretense of attending a conference in Paris.

Earlier this month, HUR agents engaged in a gunfight in Kiev with agents from the rival Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which some news outlets linked to the fight for protection money from the scam-call criminal businesses.

Aside from NABU and SAPO, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NAPK) obliges hundreds of thousands of civil servants to submit annual finance and property declarations.