Is the former head of Zelenskiy’s presidential administration, Andriy Yermak, going to skip the country before formal corruption charges are brought against him?

That is the question being asked on the streets of Kyiv over the weekend after reports emerged that Yermak, until recently the second most powerful man in the country after the president himself, had visited the Intelligence Services offices and was preparing documents to leave the country. Since martial law was imposed at the start of the war no men of military age are allowed to leave the country.

“Yermak visited the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) office; a border crossing may be in the works,” NV reported on December 5, adding that cover documents may be being prepared.

According to local reports the head of the SVR is close to Yermak, who maintained an extremely wide circle of loyalists in government in connection to his presidential duties.

Yermak was forced to resign on November 28 after National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) raided his office and home last week as part of an expanding corruption investigation into Energoatom, the state nuclear power utility.

Last week, Yermak said that he was “going to the front” to serve in the AFU. Analysts said that he joined the armed forces than responsibility for his case would be transferred from NABU to the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) and is indirectly under the president’s control, via the General Prosecutor office. NABU is entirely independent from the government and was set up at the EU’s behest.

A friend and former business part of Zelenskiy’s, Timur Mindich, has been accused of using his influence to demand 10-15% kickbacks on state procurement contracts and siphoned off a reported $100mn in the midst of the war with Russia.

Mindich was tipped off just before NABU raided his home where a solid gold toilet was found, and is now thought to be sheltering in Israel. Zelenskiy has imposed sanctions on Mindich, freezing his assets in Ukraine, but no arrest warrant has been issued.

Although no formal charges have yet been filed against Yermak, charges could be brought soon as NABU is reportedly preparing new audio evidence as part of “Operation Midas”, and is dribbling out more evidence. Two ministers have already been forced to resign in connection with the case and half a dozen minor officials taken into pre-trial custody. NABU has said that up to 40 officials may be involved in the scam. Commentators have suggested that Yermak could be one of them.

Mindich, a former adviser to Zelenskiy, and his business partner reportedly left the country only hours before their homes and offices were searched. An investigation has been opened into officials at the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) that is also involved in the investigation, where the source of the leak is believed to have come from.

The case has rocked Kyiv’s political establishment and comes at a time when the Ukrainian government is under intense international scrutiny over governance and transparency as it tries to persuade its European partners to come up with a €140bn loan to keep it in the war.

Economists have warned that without this funding Ukraine will run out of money in the first quarter of next year and faces a macroeconomic collapse.

The European Commission (EC) has already sharply rebuked Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) and said that Ukraine cannot join the EU unless it eradicates corruption from the upper echelons of government. In the EU’s latest accession progress report Kyiv was downgraded from an A to a B due to the corruption problem.

NABU has not commented publicly on Yermak’s whereabouts but has confirmed that Operation Midas is ongoing, with more evidence expected to be released “in due course.”