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Ukraine’s anticorruption agency has launched an investigation into an alleged $100m kickback scheme involving Energoatom, the state-run nuclear power company that supplies more than half of the country’s electricity.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), which operates independently of the government, announced the probe on Monday as the country faces another harsh winter under daily Russian bombardment.

In a statement posted on social media, NABU said that a “high-level criminal organisation” orchestrated the alleged scheme, led by a businessman and involving a former adviser to the energy minister, Energoatom’s head of security, and four other employees.

“In total, approximately 100 million USD passed through this so-called laundromat,” NABU said, without naming the suspects.

“The minister’s adviser and the director of security at Energoatom took control of all the company’s purchases and created conditions under which all contractors had to pay illegal benefits,” according to NABU chief detective Oleksandr Abakumov.

He said the group discussed increasing the kickback rate during work on protective structures at the Khmelnytskyi nuclear plant last October.

Investigators said Energoatom’s contractors were forced to pay bribes of 10 to 15 percent to avoid losing contracts or facing payment delays.

“A strategic enterprise with annual income exceeding 200 billion hryvnias [$4.7bn] was managed not by authorised officials but by individuals with no formal authority,” NABU said.

Zelenskyy calls for ‘criminal verdicts’

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, addressing the nation on Monday evening, urged full cooperation with the investigation. “Everyone who has been involved in corruption schemes must receive a clear legal response. There must be criminal verdicts,” he said.

Zelenskyy’s comments come just months after he was forced to reverse plans to curb the agency’s independence following widespread protests. Eradicating corruption remains a crucial condition for Ukraine’s European Union membership bid, a goal Kyiv views as central to its post-war future.

Energoatom confirmed on social media that its offices were being searched and said it was cooperating with investigators.

Deputy Minister of Energy of Ukraine Svitlana Grynchuk told reporters she was not yet familiar with the case details, but promised a “transparent process” and accountability for anyone found guilty. “I hope that the transparency of the investigation will reassure our international partners,” she said.

Ukraine’s power infrastructure has suffered extensive damage from Russia’s air strikes this autumn, leaving large parts of the country without electricity. Although Moscow has not targeted nuclear reactors directly, Ukrainian authorities say substations linked to them have been repeatedly hit.

NABU released photographs showing stacks of cash, Ukrainian hryvnias, US dollars and euros, stuffed into bags and piled on tables. The agency did not disclose the owners of the seized money.

The agency conducted 70 searches, reviewed more than 1,000 hours of audio recordings, and deployed its entire detective staff over 15 months.

Opposition lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak, a strong supporter of anticorruption reform, said he would introduce a parliamentary motion to dismiss Grynchuk and her predecessor, German Galushchenko, now serving as justice minister. Hrynchuk declined to comment on the proposal, while Galushchenko did not respond to requests for comment.

The 30th annual United Nations climate change conference (COP30) has started in the Brazilian city of Belem, with leaders calling for countries to take a united approach against global warming.

“In this arena of COP30, your job here is not to fight one another – your job here is to fight this climate crisis, together,” the UN’s climate chief, Simon Stiell, told delegates on Monday.

Some 50,000 people from more than 190 countries are expected to attend the 12-day event, which is being held at the edge of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.

Addressing the conference, Stiell said that previous climate talks had helped, but that there was “much more work to do”.

The UN climate boss noted that countries would have to move “much, much faster” in driving down greenhouse gas emissions. “Lamenting is not a strategy. We need solutions,” he said.

His comments came as a new UN analysis of countries’ climate plans found that the pledged reductions fall far short of the drop needed by 2035 to limit temperatures to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial temperatures.

If this threshold is breached, the world will experience far more severe impacts than it has so far, experts say.

“Climate change is no longer a threat of the future. It is a tragedy of the present,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stressed at the start of COP30.

Brazil’s leader condemned those seeking to undermine efforts to combat the climate crisis.

“They attack institutions, they attack science and universities,” he said. “It’s time to inflict a new defeat on the deniers.”

The United States is not sending any delegates to COP30 in keeping with President Donald Trump’s anti-climate change stance.

“It’s a good thing that they are not sending anyone. It wasn’t going to be constructive if they did,” the US’s former special envoy for climate, Todd Stern, said of the Trump administration’s decision.

COP30 President Andre Correa do Lago said the US’s absence “has opened some space for the world to see what developing countries are doing”.

Pablo Inuma Flores, an Indigenous leader from Peru, urged world leaders to do more than simply give pledges at this year’s conference.

“We want to make sure that they don’t keep promising, that they will start protecting, because we as Indigenous people are the ones who suffer from these impacts of climate change,” he said.

In a letter to COP30 that was published on Monday, dozens of scientists expressed their fears about the melting of glaciers, ice sheets and other frozen parts of the planet.