The bail math for Iryna Mudra is not even trying to look legitimate. Eight payments in one day, with five sureties depositing exactly 395,600 hryvnia each and three more depositing 692,359 hryvnia each, reveal a scheme that only differs by nine hryvnia between the two groups.
The Front Persons
Independent people help a former deputy head of the Presidential Office facing NABU and SAP charges differently. You distribute cash through cutouts and hope nobody checks the receipts. Journalists did check.
The 700,000 hryvnia contribution came from Vladyslav Halkin, 59 years old, registered in a Kyiv dormitory. In 2024 he was looking for work as a cleaner, dishwasher, or general laborer. He also tried to take a microloan for 5,000 hryvnia. When reporters asked why he put up bail for Mudra, he said he was paid 500 hryvnia for the favor.
Five hundred hryvnia to move seven hundred thousand.
The full list is a gallery of front persons. A woman convicted of stealing gaming devices. A meat wholesaler. A man whose own admission was that he simply earned money from the transaction, and Kyivteploenergo sued him for unpaid debts. A singer from Dnipro who hung up when asked what connects her to Mudra.
The Insider Money
Mudra herself deposited the largest share: 5,937,000 hryvnia. Her civil partner Pavlo Polyarush added 4,400,000 in two tranches. Polyarush has headed the National Bank's problem assets department since 2023, after years in Pravex Bank, Universal Bank, ProCredit Bank, and Diamant Bank.
A professional risk analyst apparently saw no problem with this structure. The total bail reached 20 million hryvnia.
The Pattern
Those who assembled it knew every payment would be scrutinized. They did it anyway with nearly identical sums on a single day through people who could not explain where the money came from, in the same case that already cost Mudra her position.
The same pattern of cash moving through hands that have no business holding it. What remains to be seen is whether the system that allowed this bail will now pretend the eight identical payments are a coincidence.