cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9636076
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.
This story contains details which don’t make physical sense to me.
A bundle of $10,000, that’s 100 $100 bills, occupies (6.14 x 2.61 x 0.0043 )in = 6.89in^3
Then a refrigerator box might be (72 x 38 x 33)in = 90,288 in^3
Dividing the two out, we get:
90,288 / 6.89 ~= 13,100 bundles/refrigerator box
Which adds up to
$131 million per boxSo while any one box might hold $140 million, I see multiple boxes AND refrigerator boxes aren’t going to stand up to that kind of weight. A pile of cash like that is gonna weigh a ton.
maybe it’s one of those industrial/costco fridges?
Sure, that might account for the discrepancy between the 131 and 140 million dollars. There are three boxes in the photo, so if they were all filled with cash there’d be about $400 million total and each box would weigh in at ~1 ton which would tear a refrigerator box to shreds.
IMO - this smells of fake news/propaganda.
IMO - this smells of fake news/propaganda.
yes it does, but i think that basic media literacy skills will help you detect it – not the amount of money.
besides, the fact that the drug cartels are able to smuggle several fold larger sums in dramatically smaller packages – tires, toys, candy, clothes, coffee, produce, dogs, mules, etc. – proves that if there’s a will, there’s a way and that comes atleast doubly true for money.
I appreciate the sentiment and believe basic media literacy skills include, and don’t exclude, questions like “does this make physical sense?” which I’ve tried to address for the community here.
it literally gave you an example of why the question of “does this make physical sense” isn’t enough with the drug cartels.
Idk bruh, we may just have to agree to disagree. There’s a finite physical limit to how many $100 bills can be crammed into a tire, toy, or dog. Even if there is a will to cram more than that, physical limits are limits.
but those are obviously not USD bills.
The image was enhanced and run through an analysis to identify the type of currency. They’ve been confirmed as USD $100 notes.
huh. the color’s all wrong but it does look like a dollar.
Yup, we saw that as well. When we accounted for the color of the lighting in the room, the analysis confidence rose from “confident” to “dead-on balls accurate.”
