Over 70 days on business trips: Head of the State Financial Monitoring Service was abroad during the scandals — investigation

During his year as head of the State Financial Monitoring Service, Philip Pronin spent more than 70 days on foreign business trips. He visited France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Tanzania, Mexico, and other countries. His trips often coincided with important events in Ukraine — meetings of the parliamentary Temporary Investigative Commission or corruption scandals involving his subordinates.

This is stated in the material of Bihus.Info.

Philip Pronin was appointed head of the State Financial Monitoring Service on December 31, 2024. Already at the beginning of his work, the service began to collect information about the business of the fifth president Petro Poroshenko. Later, this became the basis for the introduction of sanctions. The story caused a public outcry. Against this background, Pronin went on a business trip to Paris.

In the first months of his work, he visited France twice and Luxembourg. During this same period, Pronin missed several meetings of the parliamentary TSK, to which he was invited by the people’s deputies.

In the fall, the number of trips increased. In September, MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak announced possible violations during the construction of fortifications in the Donetsk region. At that time, Pronin was the head of the Poltava Regional State Administration. According to the MP, of the 372 million hryvnias allocated for defense facilities, at least 200 million could have been misappropriated through schemes with shell companies, inflated prices, and fictitious contracts. The NABU began to check these facts.

On October 21, 2025, NABU detectives conducted searches at the headquarters of the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine. In particular, at the residence of Pronin’s first deputy, Bohdan Korolchuk. At that time, Pronin himself was on a business trip in Paris.

Pronin spent almost all of October 2025 traveling abroad. At the beginning of the month, he went to Zurich for a one-day meeting, but the trip lasted almost a week. He returned on October 5, and a few days later he went to Bern. From there, he went to Paris and returned to Ukraine only at the end of October.

In November, NABU reported on a large-scale operation “Midas”, which concerns embezzlement in the energy sector. According to the investigation, the money was withdrawn through complex financial schemes, and the amounts reached hundreds of millions of hryvnias. In such cases, the State Financial Monitoring Service plays an important role, because it is this service that monitors financial transactions and the movement of funds. At the same time, NABU stated that responses to some of their requests were delayed by several months or did not arrive at all.

Also in November, the first suspects in the case, Lesya Ustimenko and Lyudmila Zorina, were released on bail. According to the journalists of “Schemes,” 37 million hryvnias of bail was paid by a company with an authorized capital of 1,000 hryvnias, which was registered a few months earlier. The State Financial Monitoring Service explained that they do not have the authority to block the payment of bail and check the origin of the funds after the transaction.

At the same time, in February it became known that the bail for another Midas defendant had been blocked. This happened after public publicity and criticism in the media.

Amid the growing number of questions about the service’s work, Pronin went on another business trip. He spent almost a month in Tanzania and Mexico.

In total, during his year in office, Philip Pronin spent more than 70 days traveling abroad. This number does not include vacations and sick leave.

Let us recall that in 2024, the Poltava Regional Military Administration received almost 400 million hryvnias for the construction of fortifications in the Donetsk region . However, instead of reliable protection for the military, only conditional structures appeared there – sticks, several pits and low-quality materials. Experts call this more of an imitation than a real fortification, unable to withstand modern weapons

As reported, a report to the European Commission by the Coalition of Ukrainian NGOs led by the Laboratory of Legislative Initiatives (LLI) indicated the political motives of the activities of the Head of the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine, Philip Pronin, on the basis of whose letter sanctions were imposed against Petro Poroshenko.

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