Ukraine’s corruption crisis continues. Today, Zelensky officially sanctioned Timur Mindich, supposed organizer of a large-scale graft operation uncovered by the country’s western-funded anti-corruption organs.
Said organs call their investigation into Myndich ‘Operation Midas’ - the king who turned all he touched into gold. As we will see, Myndych’s magic seems to largely consist in his ability to grill a delicious shashlyk for president Zelensky.
I went into the details of the case yesterday. But who is the mysterious Mr Myndich, a man the Ukrainian press calls ‘Zelensky’s wallet’?
In truth, understanding this is not a simple task.
Our hero figures in Ukrainian property registers under at least three names - “Timur Mindich”, “Tymur Myndych” and “Tymur Myndich”.
And in this week’s thunderous ‘Myndich tapes’, this ‘Midas’ calls himself ‘Karlson’. He gave his fellow corrupt cronies delightful names like ‘Che Guevara’ and ‘Professor’ when discussing how to leach the state of funds.
As of Autumn 2025, the individual or individuals under the aforementioned three names were listed as co-owners of at least 15 different Ukrainian companies and organizations. More than half of these companies were part of the business empire of currently imprisoned oligarch Igor Kolomoisky.
Kolomoisky in 2019
As we will see, Myndich’s life and rise is largely thanks to Mr Kolomoisky.
But despite Kolomoisky being the sandak (godfather) of Myndich’s son, the latter betrayed him. Even worse, he didn’t pay his debts…
And as I was writing this article, rumors began appearing in the Ukrainian press that the incarcerated Kolomoisky is playing a role in Myndich’s present downfall. Today’s article should give you a hint as to why.
Myndich (left) with business partners Igor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov, 2020. At a basketball game
Timur Mindych was born in 1979 in the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk (today known as Dnipro). The 70s saw the city spread its tentacles of power across the Soviet Union. General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, a native of the city, had filled the Soviet corridors of power with representatives of Dnepropetrovsk. As the joke went, Russia had three eras – pre-Petrine, Petrine, and Dnepro-Petrine.
Dnepropetrovsk has always been characterized by subterfuge and conspiracy. In the Soviet period, it was a closed city – outsiders could not visit Dnepropetrovsk due to its production of inter-continental ballistic missiles at the massive Yuzhmash factory.
Yuzhmash missiles miraculously found their way to the DPRK, Iraq, and a number of other reclusive regimes in the 90s and 2000s.
By the 1990s, the former director of Yuzhmash took power – Leonid Kuchma. Kuchma became Ukraine’s most important president, creating the oligarchic class and state structure that we know and love to this very day.
It was in the late 90s that the star rose of Igor Kolomoisky, undoubtedly Ukraine’s most colorful entrepreneur. In 2012, he funded the construction of the world’s largest Jewish cultural location, the Menorah Centre.
I am tempted to wonder if Dnepropetrovk’s Menorah Centre also featured shark tanks embedded in the walls, as Kolomoisky’s office did.
One assumes that it was through Dnepropetrovsk’s vibrant Jewish community that Kolomoisky met Timur Myndich. One of the few things known for certain about Myndich’s life prior to Zelensky’s election in 2019 is that he was a member of the administrative council of the Jewish community of Dnipropetrovsk - Kolomoisky was president.
Whatever the case, Myndich ended up being relatively trusted by Kolomoisky. There are reports that he was in charge of security for Kolomoisky’s sprawling ‘Privat’ financial empire. Others claim Myndich was responsible for providing entertainment.
In a Kolomoisky interview from 2019, the magnate claims that he met Myndich in the early 2000s because he was then engaged to Kolomoisky’s daughter, Anzhelika. They didn’t end up getting married, though that didn’t dent the friendship between these two men. Far from it.
In the same interview, Kolomoisky mentions that it was Myndich who actually introduced him to the young comic Vladimir Zelensky, around 2008.
Zelensky in the 2000s
This would be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Kolomoisky’s 1+1 media group became the main home for the Kvartal 95 comedy studio, jointly owned by Zelensky and Myndich.
After 2015, Kolomoisky entered an intractable conflict with president Petro Poroshenko and Washington. And simultaneously, Zelensky launched a television show where he played the president – ‘the Servant of the People’. Brutally caricaturing the IMF, Ukrainian liberal nationalists, and other enemies of Kolomoisky’s, the show became massively popular.
When Zelensky ran for president in 2019, he won easily. His newly-created party was called ‘Servant of the People’. Journalists found that Zelensky had made 13 flights to visit Kolomoisky in 2017 and 2018 — twice to Israel, eleven times to Switzerland.
A 2019 anti-Zelensky poster, titled ‘Servant of the Oligarch’. The characteristically laughing Kolomoisky is pictured behind Zelensky.
By 2018 and 2019, Myndich was also sighted flying to Israel numerous times to meet with Kolomoisky. It was speculated that Myndich played the role of an intermediary between the soon-to-be president Kolomoisky. By now, it was increasingly sensitive for Zelensky to be seen in public with the ultra-toxic magnate. Myndich, in contrast, was entirely unknown.
And besides, until Zelensky became president, Kolomoisky could not return to Ukraine, for fear of being extradited to the US. He returned a few weeks following Zelensky’s election.
Let’s return to Kolomoisky’s 2019 interview. Here is the full extract, an attempt to convey the man’s inimitable cadence. It is notable that in this first mention of Myndich, Kolomoisky already drops some hints that the man in question is both not entirely trustworthy, and also a significant business partner. He also quite unconvincingly denies rumors of Myndich being the intermediary between him and Zelensky:
– Timur Mindich is one of the co-owners of Kvartal 95 [Zelensky’s comedy studio - EIU]. Mindich flew with you to Dnipro on the same plane.
– Yes. He was in Israel, and we flew back together. And it’s not that he flew with me, it’s that I flew with him.
– On your plane?
– No, on his plane.
– Mykhailo Tkach [a journalist] wrote that you use this plane.
– Everyone uses this plane, actually. I can give you a list of passengers who’ve flown on it. And you know that I didn’t fly anywhere at all for eight months.
– Who is Mindich? A friend, a colleague, a business partner?
– Let’s put it this way: he is a business partner in some projects, not particularly important ones, like in real estate development.
– How do you know him?
– He used to be my daughter’s fiancé (smiles).
– Did they get married?
– No.
– I suspect he might be your representative in Kvartal 95.
– Would I trust the former almost-fiancé of my daughter to be my representative? (laughs)
– I don’t know why they broke up. Maybe you arranged it on purpose. He could be a nominal co-owner, and you the real one?
– Do you even know how old he is? He turns 40 this year. He’s almost the same age as Zelenskyy, a year younger (pauses). Oh, by the way, Mindich introduced me to Zelenskyy once, a very long time ago.
(thinks) As I recall, it must have been 2008 or 2009. Yuriy Borysov had something to do with that introduction as well. He worked with Firtash [an important oligarch the US has been trying to extradite from Austria since 2014 - EIU[ and was the head of Ukrhazvydobuvannya during Yanukovych’s time (pauses). Then he (Mindich) got married, she (my daughter) got married. They parted on good terms.
– So he isn’t a nominal owner of Kvartal on your behalf?
– No. You have to understand that there are things you’re better off not owning. Shall we go through it? What is Kvartal, really? Basically, it’s a fiction from the standpoint of material assets.
This is intellect, content and creativity that exist in the minds of the people who create that content. Content already created, content being created, and content that will be created. It’s essentially intellectual property.
Meaning, you’re buying the rights to what was, what is, and what will be. There’s nothing else – no property, no material assets, no real estate, absolutely nothing.
A fiction from the standpoint of material assets… Kolomoisky truly had a way with words, especially when it came to describing his own lived experience in the business sphere.
Instead of Anzhelika Kolomoiskaya, Myndich ended up marrying Katerina Verber in 2010, a stone’s throw from Jerusalem’s wailing wall. Katerina is herself the owner of the Dolce&Gabbana boutique in Kiev - probably linked to Myndich’s transnational diamond empire, which spans Dubai, London, and St Petersburg.
Myndich’s mother-in-law, Alla Verber, was a highly influential woman in Moscow elite circles. Fashion director of Moscow’s TSUM department store, Alla had contacts to just about everyone in Russian high society. Below, she is pictured with Philipp Kirkorov (left), one of Russia’s most well-known and absurd popstars.
Alla, Timur, and Katerina, 2017
Alla mysteriously died in 2019 while at an elite Italian resort town. Some speculated she was poisoned by Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelensky’s presidential administration. Theories exist that Yermak and Myndich were then engaged in a furious shadow war over control of covert contacts with the Russian elite. Following Alla Verber’s death, Yermak became the main secret envoy to Moscow. I wrote about that affair here.
Myndich and his family, Purim 2024. The choice of attire - Ukrainian peasant costumes - is particularly ironic
It was during Zelensky’s 2019 electoral campaign that the name Myndich first appeared in the public eye. Incumbent president Poroshenko accused Zelensky of drug dependency, calling on him to do a blood test. Zelensky agreed, on condition that Poroshenko do an alcohol test – different generations, different substances.
Poroshenko found it hard to simulate enjoyment
Zelensky was much more skilled at wearing the right face
And it turned out that the Mercedes upon which Zelensky had glided to the medical clinic was owned by a hitherto unknown gentleman — Timur Myndich.
Myndich soon made a few more appearances in the press.
In early 2020, journalists recorded the reclusive Myndich visiting the president’s office thrice. Coincidentally, no doubt, it occurred as parliament was deciding on the form of the new ‘anti-oligarch’ law, which was supposedly largely aimed at figures like Kolomoisky.
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