Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) say they have exposed the head of one of the factions in the Verkhovna Rada for allegedly offering illicit benefits to several lawmakers from factions not led by that person in exchange for votes “for” or “against” specific bills, NABU said in a Telegram post on Tuesday evening, January 13.
“Preliminary legal qualification: Part 4, Article 369 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine,” the bureau added.
Sources cited by Ukrainska Pravda say the figure in question is former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and that searches are underway at her Batkivshchyna party office on Turovska Street in Kyiv.
Member of Parliament Oleksiy Honcharenko confirmed the same information.
He wrote on Telegram that she had held talks with several deputies about switching to-or informally joining—the Batkivshchyna faction for money. “One of the deputies recorded it and handed the materials to NABU,” he added, noting that the article cited by the bureau carries a penalty of four to eight years in prison, with or without confiscation of property.
On December 27, 2025, NABU and SAPO said they had uncovered a group of sitting members of Ukraine’s parliament who, according to investigators, systematically “received improper benefits” for their votes in the Verkhovna Rada.
NABU also said staff from the State Protection Directorate obstructed investigative actions in Rada committees.
Honcharenko wrote at the time on Telegram that NABU was conducting investigative actions in the Rada’s transport committee premises. “There are also questions for the chair of the Rada’s transport committee, a friend of Shefir (Serhiy Shefir is the first assistant to the President of Ukraine from 2019 to 2024, co-founder of the Kvartal 95 studio.) and (President of Ukraine Volodymyr) Zelensky - Yuriy Kysil,” his message reads.
“Serhiy Shefir figures in a NABU investigation into corruption in the energy sector known as the ‘Mindich tapes.’”
“This concerns money-laundering schemes through Energoatom and other state-owned enterprises, where the amounts reached about $100 million,” the Ukrainian online outlet Zerkalo Nedeli wrote.
Yulia Tymoshenko, 65, leader of the All-Ukrainian Union Batkivshchyna and a member of parliament, served as Ukraine’s prime minister in 2005 and again from 2007 to 2010.
In 2004, she co-organized and led the Orange Revolution alongside Viktor Yushchenko.
Under the rule of fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych, several criminal cases were opened against Tymoshenko: she was arrested in August 2011 and, in October that year, sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of power in connection with gas contracts signed with Russia in January 2009.
She was released in February 2014 during the Ukrainian Revolution.
