This winter, on February 15, former Justice Minister Herman Halushchenko was detained as he was about to leave for abroad. The next day, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutorʼs Office (SAPO) declared the suspicion against him in the “Midas” case. The court remanded him in custody, setting bail at UAH 200 million.
Herman Halushchenko spent more than four months in prison. Eventually, the court reduced the bail to UAH 150 million. On June 29, this amount was transferred to the account of the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) in five payments from the accounts of four different companies.
When bail was posted for a suspect in a high-profile corruption case, a wave of indignation arose in the media and social networks. Journalists immediately began searching for the owners of the companies that transferred the money.
The overall picture became clear two months later, when NABU and SAPO declared the suspicion to an official in the Office of the President (OP) Iryna Mudra. In particular, the suspicion was for her help in laundering the money that went to bail for Halushchenko.
According to NABU and SAPO, the money came from businessman Tymur Mindich. The coverup companies through whose accounts the funds were transferred were controlled by businessman Maksym Mykytas, and the scheme was “blessed” by a high-ranking official in the Office of the President.
Former Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko is led out of the courtroom after a hearing on a preventive measure, Kyiv, February 16, 2026.
Getty Images / «Babel'»
NABU and SAPO usually accompany their loud suspicions with the publication of wiretaps. This time — among other things — they published an audio recording of a conversation between businessman Maksym Mykytas and his trusted assistant.
In the recording, the assistant explains to Maksym Mykytas that the money will go through accounts at “Sense Bank”. In addition, the wiretaps revealed that they were assisted by the chairman of the bankʼs supervisory board Mykola Hladyshenko and the chairman of the board Oleksiy Stupak. NABU and SAPO declared the suspicions to Oleksiy Stupak and Mykola Hladyshenko, that they helped launder money that was used for bail.
At that moment, the bank was already at the center of a corruption scandal. After the arrest of Herman Halushchenko in the “Midas” case, the media and several opposition MPs got access to the “Midas” case materials, including the wiretapping protocols of the suspects.
From the content of one of the protocols, it became clear that the candidates for the bankʼs supervisory board were approved behind the scenes, in violation of the law. In the wake of this scandal, the “Sense Bank” case has been regularly heard by the parliamentary TIC, headed by the MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak, since May 2026.
We will return to what is happening at the TIC meetings in subsequent publications. In this article, we will focus on a key moment in the history of the bail for Herman Halushchenko. It became clear after the scandal broke out and the NBU began an audit of “Sense Bank”.
In fact, “Sense Bank” was a secondary element in the scheme of "leaking" money for bail. This is confirmed by three documents from three different departments that are directly involved in the case. These documents, which Babel got acquainted with, describe the movement of money to the treasury account of HACC with varying levels of detail.
We describe the scheme based on these documents.
At the center of the scheme is the “FUIB” bank, which is part of the SCM structure.
It was in this bank, in the accounts of a company controlled by Maksym Mykytas, that the full amount of the collateral — UAH 150 million — was accumulated. The money was received in parts from the accounts of dozens of companies and individual entrepreneurs (IEs) to the FUIB account, and most of the payments did not exceed UAH 1 million.
Where did the money come from in these dozens of companies and IEs?
Presumably, they sold non-cash funds that were already in their accounts for a certain commission, and received cash in return. A similar (illegal) conversion service is provided in Kyiv and other cities by so-called “conversion centers”.
Relying on the NABU wiretaps, the physical cash for the collateral for Herman Halushchenko came from Tymur Mindich through the office of the “Metrobud” company, which is controlled by businessman Maksym Mykytas.
As the money accumulated in the “FUIB” account, the scheme organizers divided the collateral into large parts. Approximately a third of it was directly transferred to the HACC account from the “FUIB” account.
The organizers divided approximately two-thirds of the collateral into four parts and transferred the money to the HACC account through accounts in three other banks: “Sense Bank”, “OTP Bank”, and “Idea Bank”.
This is what the entire scheme looked like (we rounded the amounts of payments and transfers).
«Babel'»
At the center of the scheme is the account of the company "Giran Konstrakt" at the “FUIB” bank. As follows from the document reviewed by Babel, this account was empty from the moment of its opening until the period of June 22-29, 2026, when millions of hryvnias began to pass through it in transit.
At the same time, the companyʼs authorized capital is UAH 5000. This is easy to check in the “YouControl” database. Such operations have several signs of fictitiousness, which NBU established for banks almost ten years ago. In addition, "Giran Konstrakt" fell under several criteria for a shell company, which NBU established six years ago.
In theory, at the moment when the organizers of the scheme began to divide the collateral into parts and withdraw money from “FUIB” to accounts in other banks, the bankʼs automation system should have worked, stopped the payments and filtered them for manual verification.
Then the bankʼs compliance control department should have reported them to the State Financial Monitoring Service (SFMS), which is coordinated by the Ministry of Finance.
What happened in practice remains to be seen. Babel will monitor the development of events.