$140M in Fridge Boxes Marked "For the Servant of the People": NABU Raids Ex-Procurement Chief
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Cash seized during the NABU raid on the offices of former Defence Procurement Agency head Arsen Zhumadilov (Photo: NABU)
Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau raided the offices of former Defence Procurement Agency head Arsen Zhumadilov on Sept. 23, seizing more than $140 million in cash packed into refrigerator boxes — one of them marked “For the Servant of the People.”
On 23 September, Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) raided the offices of Arsen Zhumadilov, former head of Ukraine's Defence Procurement Agency, in connection with allegations of waste, fraud and corruption.
Zhumadilov left the agency on August 31, one week before the New York Times published an investigation into defence procurement fraud identified during an audit. That investigation reported that Ukraine lost $1.2 billion to fraud and waste in 2024 alone.
A former defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, who attempted to overhaul the system, said defence contractors ran him out of office for doing so.
“There is a lot of corruption,” Fedorov said after his dismissal in mid-July.
During the raid, NABU seized more than $140 million in cash packed into multiple refrigerator boxes, one of which bore a sticker reading “For the servant of the people.”
Before entering politics, Volodymyr Zelensky starred in the satirical series “Servant of the People,” playing a schoolteacher who becomes president of Ukraine. In 2019, Zelensky defeated incumbent Petro Poroshenko in a landslide, translating his on-screen role into a real presidency.
The Office of the President of Ukraine did not respond to a request for comment on the NABU raid's findings.
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