Is a story mimicking The New Voice of Ukraine claiming $140 million was found at Arsen Zhumadilov's home, marked "For the Servant of the People," real? No, that's not true: The New Voice of Ukraine did not publish such a report. Instead, the fake story appeared on a website designed to imitate the publication's real site. Lead Stories found no credible news coverage or government sources confirming such a raid.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) published on a counterfeit version of The New Voice of Ukraine website on Sept. 23, 2026. The story opened:
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.'
The fraudulent article was illustrated with this image at the time of writing:
(Image source: nvukraine.com website.)
Videos claiming to show the raid of Zhumadilov's home also circulated online. One such post (archived here) was published by the @DragaMariba account on X on Sept. 24, 2026. Translated from Dutch, it read:
During a search of the office of the former director of the Ukrainian defense procurement organization, 140 million dollars were found, packed in boxes from refrigerators. On one of the boxes was written 'For the servant of the people,' according to Ukrainian media.
On September 23, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) conducted a search of the offices of Arsen Zhumadilov, the former director of the Ukrainian agency for defense procurement, in connection with suspicions of corruption. He had previously been involved in the 'Midas' case.
Zhumadilov left the agency on August 31, a week before the New York Times published an investigation into fraud in the defense procurement sector, amounting to 1.2 billion dollars.
Send more money..
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @DragaMariba on X.)
Real vs. fake
The addresses for the two websites are similar enough to confuse:
Real New Voice of Ukraine: english.nv.ua/
Fake New Voice of Ukraine: nvukraine.com/
The fake website was registered (archived here) on Sept. 21, 2026, just two days before the fabricated story appeared online.
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports from credible news outlets confirming the claim using the search terms: "Zhumadilov," "140 million," and "Servant of the People."
The real New Voice of Ukraine, however, published its own story (archived here) on Sept. 25, 2026, about the fake article published by its imposter. The article opened:
Russians created and spread an AI-generated fake claiming that Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, had searched former head of Ukraine's Defense Procurement Agency Arsen Zhumadilov and found $140 million in cash. NABU conducted no such searches. Russia pushed the fake in an effort to portray Ukraine to the West as corrupt while Vladimir Putin's special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, was holding talks with a U.S. delegation in New York.
This is what the article looked like on the real website of The New Voice of Ukraine at the time of writing:
(Image source: The New Voice of Ukraine website.)
NABU website
Lead Stories also searched the NABU website (archived here) for any references to Zhumadilov. The search produced no results.
