Bomb injures sanctioned Ukrainian businessman Vadym Yermolaiev in apparent assassination attempt in Monaco

A bomb ripped through the lobby of a residential building in Monaco on the evening of June 29, wounding three people — including two who sustained life-threatening injuries. Surveillance cameras captured an unidentified man leaving a bag in the building’s entrance before fleeing, according to the French news channel BFM TV. The device, believed to have been packed with bolts and buckshot, detonated as people were entering the building on Rue Révérend-Père-Louis-Frolla.

Monaco’s head of government Christophe Mirmand said the victims were a man and a woman between the ages of 50 and 60, along with a 13-year-old associated with them. The man and woman are in serious condition with life-threatening injuries. All three were taken to hospitals in Nice.

Le Figaro, citing sources, reported that the victims belong to a single Ukrainian family, and that one of those wounded is Ukrainian businessman Vadym Yermolaiev. Two sources in business circles confirmed that to Ukrainska Pravda. The Ukrainian Embassy in France stated that it was verifying information about the Ukrainian nationals wounded in the blast.

Mirmand said an incident of this kind had never occurred in the principality before. Authorities are searching for the man who left the bag and fled. Monaco’s Prosecutor General Stéphane Thibault ruled out a terrorism motive. The precise legal characterization of the incident, authorities said, would be determined later.

Yermolaiev, 58, is a Dnipro-born businessman and the founder of the Alef trade and manufacturing corporation, one of the city’s largest property developers. His business spans real estate, construction materials manufacturing, agriculture, mining, logistics, and alcohol production. A year before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Forbes Ukraine valued his fortune at $220 million.

Yermolaiev operates a business in Ukraine but is not formally a Ukrainian businessman, the Ukrainian news outlet Hromadske reported. He has claimed to have renounced his Ukrainian citizenship in 2017 and has held only a Cypriot passport since then. In recent years he has lived in Monaco.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky imposed sanctions on Yermolaiev and companies linked to him in December 2023. Ukrainian law enforcement says alcohol enterprises associated with him were re-registered under Russian law after the occupation of Crimea, continued operating on the peninsula, and paid taxes into Russia’s budget. Yermolaiev denied this. In 2024, Hromadske reported that Yermolaiev had transferred some of his assets to his 21-year-old daughter Sofiya, who lives in Cyprus and London.

Late last year, Yermolaiev’s son Artur was detained in Cyprus at Interpol’s request and extradited to Estonia, where he faced charges of organizing a criminal group that carried out telephone fraud. Estonian investigators say Artur and three other defendants named in the case set up fraudulent call centers in Ukraine that offered nonexistent investment opportunities. Between 2019 and 2022, the defendants collected more than 100 million euros, of which 5.4 million euros came from Estonian residents. Artur reached a plea deal, received a suspended sentence, paid 8.5 million euros, and soon left Estonia under a ban on re-entry.