Ukraine’s former energy minister German Galushchenko has been formally named as a suspect in a high-profile money laundering probe, investigators said Monday.

The announcement comes one day after Galushchenko was detained by law enforcement attempting to leave Ukraine, and is the latest development in a corruption scandal in the energy sector that rocked the government last year.

‘The former energy minister (2021–2025) has been exposed for money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation,’ the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine said in a statement.

The statement did not name Galushchenko, but he served as the country’s energy minister between 2021 and 2025.

The charges carry sentences of up to 15 years in prison, according Ukraine’s criminal code.

Galushchenko was accused in November of taking part in a $100-million kickback scheme from contractors building fortifications to defend energy infrastructure against Russian attacks.

Investigators now allege they found approximately $12 million in bank accounts linked to Galushchenko’s family.

He said in November that he would ‘defend himself in court,’ as he was suspended from his post.

He was one of several high-profile political figures who resigned in the wake of the scandal, with investigators alleging  the scheme also implicated a close ally of president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Zelensky swept to power in 2019 vowing to stamp out corruption among the political elite.

His government passed some reforms, but has also faced several embarrassing graft scandals, including within the defence ministry.

The European Union is urging sweeping reforms to stamp out corruption as part of demands for Ukrainian membership to the bloc.

Meanwhile, around 1,600 buildings in Kyiv remained without heat Sunday after a barrage of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, officials said, as Ukraine’s army claimed a strike on a key oil terminal in Russia.

Authorities in the Ukrainian capital say around 1,100 residential buildings and 500 other buildings were still without heat in Kyiv, in the midst of a gruelling winter of war.

Russia’s recent attacks have triggered Ukraine’s worst energy crisis of the nearly four-year-old war, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes without heat and electricity at a time when temperatures have dropped as low as -20C.

Deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba said overnight that Russian strikes had also damaged railroad infrastructure in the southern region of Odesa and central-eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk.

Ukraine has also targeted Russian energy infrastructure with drone strikes, targeting the oil and gas industries helping to fund the invasion Moscow launched in February 2022.

The governor of the Russian border region of Bryansk said five municipalities and part of the regional capital had been left without heat and electricity by an ‘enemy attack’ Sunday.

Ukraine’s army meanwhile said it had hit a key oil terminal in southern Russia near Moscow-annexed Crimea.

‘An oil terminal in southern Russia and the Pantsir-S1 air defence system in the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea has been hit,’ Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement.

The attack was on the Tamanneftegaz oil terminal near the village of Volna in the Krasnodar region. Volna is home to the Black Sea port of Taman, used for Russian oil, coal and grain shipments.

Ukraine said the strike was part of ‘measures to reduce the offensive and economic potential of the Russian aggressor’.

Krasnodar governor Veniamin Kondratyev had earlier said a Ukrainian attack had damaged an oil storage facility in Volna and wounded two people.

More than 100 firefighters had been deployed to extinguish ‘several fires’, he added.

A house in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi — largely spared from the attacks other southern cities have seen — was also damaged, Kondratyev said.