Explosion in Monaco: What We Know About Vadym Yermolaiev

On the evening of June 29, a bomb exploded inside an apartment building in Monaco, a small country on the southern coast of France. Three people were hurt in the blast, including a Ukrainian-born businessman named Vadym Yermolaiev. Police believe the explosion may have been a planned attack meant to kill him. Investigators are still searching for whoever left the bomb in the building's lobby.

According to early reports, an unknown person left a backpack packed with explosives and sharp metal pieces called shrapnel in the lobby of the building. When the bomb went off, it injured three people — a man and a woman between the ages of 50 and 60, and a 13-year-old boy. The French news outlet Nice-Matin reported that the woman lost both of her legs in the explosion. Yermolaiev himself suffered burns and shrapnel wounds. His wife told reporters she was not in the building at the time and was not hurt.

Investigators in Monaco are looking into several possible explanations for who carried out the attack. The French newspaper Le Figaro reported that police are even looking at whether Ukraine's main security agency, called the SBU, may have been involved. Monaco's top prosecutor said on July 1 that the case is being treated as attempted murder. No arrests have been made yet, and the search for suspects is continuing.

So who is Vadym Yermolaiev? He was born in Dnipro, a city in Ukraine, and built a large business empire there. He is the founder of a company group called Alef, which works in real estate, construction, farming, mining, and more. Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, his net worth was estimated at over $200 million. In 2020, Forbes Ukraine listed him as the 23rd-richest person in the country.

Yermolaiev gave up his Ukrainian citizenship in 2017 and became a citizen of Cyprus instead. He said he did this because he was unhappy with Ukraine's court and tax systems. In December 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy placed him under personal sanctions — meaning the government put strict limits on what he could do with his money and property. Ukraine's security service said the reason was that some of his companies kept doing business in Crimea after Russia took control of that region in 2014. Those companies re-registered under Russian law and paid millions of dollars in taxes to Russia, which Ukraine said helped fund Russia's war. Yermolaiev has denied all of these claims.

Yermolaiev and his family have been connected to several other controversies. In August 2022, a Ukrainian news organization reported that he was part of a group of wealthy Ukrainians living in Monaco while their country was at war — a group journalists nicknamed the 'Monaco Battalion.' In 2024, reporters found that a company linked to him had won a contract to supply stone for Ukraine's National Military Memorial Cemetery. That company later came under his daughter's control, which reporters said was done to get around the sanctions.

In December 2025, his son Artur was arrested in Cyprus and sent to Estonia to face charges. Artur pleaded guilty to being part of a large online investment fraud scheme, paid about $10 million, and received a five-year suspended sentence, meaning he did not have to go to prison right away. The case drew a lot of attention to the Yermolaiev family's legal troubles.

Reporters and investigators have discussed several possible reasons why someone might have wanted to harm Yermolaiev. These include his past business dealings in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, possible ties to organized crime, and the legal trouble involving his son. However, none of these theories has been officially confirmed by authorities. Monaco's government has not even officially confirmed that Yermolaiev was the intended target. This is not the first violent attack on a well-known Ukrainian figure in Europe — in May 2025, a former Ukrainian politician named Andrii Portnov was shot and killed in Spain.