Manhunt after Monaco bomb attack wounds Ukrainian tycoon in ‘attempted assassination’
By Lex Harvey, Ivana Kottasová, Stephanie Halasz, Victoria Butenko, Elina Baudier Kim, CNN
(CNN) — An assassination attempt against a Ukrainian-born tycoon has sparked a large manhunt across Monaco and France, with authorities saying three people were injured on Monday when a parcel bomb went off in a residential building in the wealthy city-state.
CNN’s French affiliate BFMTV reported that the target of the explosion was businessman Vadym Yermolaiev who has left his home country and renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2019.
Local authorities refused to identify the victims publicly, only saying that the adult male victim was a resident of Monaco since at least 2021. However, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “according to local emergency services” the three people who were injured in the blast were members of “a family of Ukrainian origin.”
Monaco’s Prosecutor General Stéphane Thibault called the bombing an “attempted assassination” in a news conference on Tuesday, ruling out terrorism as the motive.
Thibault said that an unidentified suspect placed a parcel bomb in a residential building just before 9 p.m. local time on Monday. The bomb went off shortly after that, when three people who live in an appartment on the ground floor of the building arrived home, he added. All three – two adults and a child – were injured in the blast and taken to a hospital in Nice in France, according to the authorities.
Two more people wounded by glass debris on the street outside the building, Thibault said.
Large manhunt
Yermolaiev made his fortune in Dnipro, the south-eastern Ukrainian city during the wild post-soviet years. He was mostly focused on real estate and was, at one point, ranked among the richest Ukrainians.
According to publicly available documents, the 58-year old oligarch is now a citizen of Cyprus. According to the Ukrainian version of the Forbes magazine, he renounced his Ukrainian citizenship because he wanted “international protection.”
“The Ukrainian judicial system, to put it mildly, is not perfect, and the tax system is not objective,” he was quoted by Forbes as saying.
Thibault said on Tuesday that the authorities have not yet been able to speak to the victims. He said that while one of the adult victims is no longer in critical condition, the other two remain critical.
The motive of the attempted assassination remains unclear. Yermolaiev does not have any obvious links to the war in Ukraine. He has been sanctioned by Kyiv in December 2023 for doing business in the Russian-occupied Crimea, an allegation he denied in an interview with Ukrainian media.
Yermolaiev’s son Artur Yermolayev was convicted of fraud in Estonia in April. According to court documents, Yermolayev pled guilty to creating and running a phone scam scheme which, under the guise of fake investment opportunities, stole some 100 million euros between 2019 and 2022.
He was sentenced to five years in prison, but reached a deal under which he would be deported from Estonia after serving just four months of the sentence.
The suspect in Monday’s incident was caught on camera fleeing to Beausoleil, a French town which borders Monaco, the town’s mayor Gérard Spinelli said in a press conference, according to the Associated Press.
A photograph of the reported suspect was shared by BFMTV, showing a man wearing a black jumper, light-coloured trousers a black bucket hat running away.
A manhunt involving dozens of law enforcement officers from both Monaco and France was under way.
About 84 police officers and 50 French and Monégasque firefighters have been deployed to the scene, according to the government. CNN’s French affiliate BFMTV reported that some 40 French soldiers were assisting with the chase.
Violent crime is virtually nonexistent in Monaco, a city state located on the Mediterranean Sea, home to roughly 40,000 people and known as a playground for the wealthy thanks to its generous tax regime.
Monaco’s Prince Albert II said in a statement that “all the relevant State services are currently mobilized, in close cooperation with the French authorities.”
“We trust them to establish the circumstances of this tragedy as swiftly as possible, to identify those responsible and to provide every necessary response, at every level.”
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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CNN’s Mustafa Qadri contributed reporting.
