Hundreds of thousands of euros and dollars, and emeralds, all hidden in an expensive BMW. Andriy Naumov a former key member of the Ukrainian secret service was arrested by Serbian police a few days ago while trying to smuggle these items across the border. Dirty details about his past have since been been revealed one after the other; despite his corruption cases, he was close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and left his country a few hours before the war began.

Andriy Naumov was arrested in Serbia and is still being held there. The fact that the Serbian press is trying to find out everything about him comes as little surprise, as he is accused of corruption in high-ranking public positions. He took one appointment after another, while his criminal cases were almost open secrets. V4NA has compiled an article on the mysterious Mr Naumov based on an article by Serbian portal oruzjeonline.com, specialising in military topics.

First the prosecutor’s office, then the „Zone”

Andriy Naumov started his career at the Ukrainian state prosecutor’s office, where he spent 12 years. He was first a prosecutor at the department of financial, economic and state issues, then he was promoted to work with the chief prosecutor. Later he was appointed to fill the prestigious position. He finished his jurist career as the logistics manager of the Ukrainian chief prosecutor’s office.

After leaving the prosecutor’s office, Mr Naumov began working at the state authority called DAZV, which was tasked with supervising the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The 30-km zone was marked in 1986 after the disaster of the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl. It is located mainly in Ukraine, with parts in Belarus. This is the zone most heavily struck by radioactive pollution, and it was designated with the natural impact of the disaster in mind. Pollution has already fallen to normal levels in some parts of the zone according to the official position, with high values recorded elsewhere – 40 per cent of the area will remain dangerous practically forever, as the half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years.

Photo: Pixabay

At the Zone, Mr Naumov was initially responsible for the „construction of industrial facilities”, and then in 2018, he was appointed the head of the centre that managed the Zone’s organisational, technical and information support. This centre managed the Zone’s facilities and was tasked with providing information to the public about the radiation status around Chernobyl. According to Ukrainian sources, Mr Naumov cooperated with private companies that carried out work in the zone or organised trips for visitors.

However, the activities at the Zone were also being monitored by the investigative bodies of the state and suspicion of abuse of office arose, ie some of the public money intended for rehabilitation ended up in the pockets of private individuals. The suspicion of corruption was also raised in connection with Andriy Naumov and he was taken into custody, but his involvement in the case could not be established, according to the official position released to the press.

On up the hierarchy

Despite some suspicious dealings, Mr Naumov was not sidelined, on the contrary, another high-ranking position awaited him, at the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), no less. The agency is tasked with counterintelligence, protection of the constitution, combating terrorism, organised crime and other illegal activities. The SBU was set up in September 1991 to replace its predecessor the KGB of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Mr Naumov joined the ranks of SBU at the request of Ivan Bakanov, who was appointed as head of the service in August 2019. It is unclear how long Mr Naumov had been a member of the service. The public was only informed in October 2020 when he was promoted to the office of general by Volodymyr Zelensky’s decree. Interestingly, no one raised the question of how someone who had been on remand could enter the security service or how he could rise to the rank of a general.

In July 2021, Mr Naumov moved higher up in the hierarchy,

becoming the head of the internal security department, one of the top leaders at the security service.

However, in this position things didn’t go as smoothly as before. At the end of 2020, the press began to increasingly scrutinise Mr Naumov’s previous corruption cases, pointing out, for example, his close cooperation with the customs authorities, which enabled him to amass a questionable fortune. When his dealings became widely known, Mr Zelensky was forced to take action and removed him from his post with a secret decree in July 2021, without providing any explanation. However, Mr Naumov reportedly carried on with his murky dealings and continued to exploit his official connections.

He disappeared before the war broke out

Mr Naumov mysteriously disappeared on 24 February this year, just hours before Russia’s attack.

Authorities began investigating without delay, and it turned out that he had already sent his family abroad a few days earlier. However, he was stripped of his rank much later, on 31 March, according to Ukrainian press reports, and only then, a month after he fled the country and the war began, was he accused of high treason. Although Ukrainian authorities were obviously well aware that Mr Naumov was certainly in possession of extremely valuable information, locating and capturing him were handled rather sluggishly. On 1 April, Mr Zelensky even said that “I don’t have the time now to deal with all the traitors. But gradually they will all be punished”.

Meanwhile, Serbian media outlets have raised the question as to how it was possible that such a high-ranking person in possession of valuable information – whose capture must be vital to Ukraine – did not appear on the radar of EU nor NATO member states, and how it was possible that he was eventually caught in a country that is independent of these international bodies.

Mr Naumov was captured on the Serbia-North Macedonia border

V4NA news agency was among the first to report that Andriy Naumov and a German citizen wanted to cross into North Macedonia driving an expensive BMW. When customs officers searched the vehicle, they discovered that he was carrying more than 600 thousand euros and 120 thousand US dollars in cash, and two emeralds in the car.

Mr Naumov and his partner failed to officially declare possession of such valuables when crossing the border. The two men have been remanded in custody and are expected to be taken to court. Under Serbian law, they could face up to 12 years in prison. As Andriy Naumov is in possession of Ukrainian intelligence information, he could try to bargain with it in exchange for his freedom, Ukrainian media reports suggest.

This is all the more conceivable as Serbia’s Interior Minister Aleksandar Vulin is a pro-Kremlin politician, according to local Ukrainian media sources.