Serbian Court Holds Hearing In Money-Laundering Case Against Former Ukrainian Intelligence Officer

A former high-ranking officer in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) appeared on April 6 in a court in Serbia to face money-laundering charges.

Andriy Naumov, the former head of the Main Department of Internal Security of the SBU, has been detained in Serbia since June, when he taken into custody at the Serbian border attempting to cross into North Macedonia.

Naumov, who was led into the courtroom in handcuffs, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of money laundering. He has denied the charges.

He told a preliminary hearing at the High Court in Nis on March 17 that 608,000 euros and $125,000 found in his car during the arrest was "family money" and intended to pay for a move to Istanbul.

During the hearing on April 6 before the same court, Naumov's father also described the money found during the arrest as "family money."

Oleg Naumov said that on February 16 last year, he borrowed money from his business partner to open a TV channel.

"I wanted to open a new channel and sell it to cable operators throughout Ukraine, so I needed money. I borrowed the money from a business partner, promising to return it by the end of 2023," Oleg Naumov said.

Oleg Naumov said he abandoned the idea of opening a TV channel due to the full-scale invasion of Russia and transferred the money to Europe and then to his daughter-in-law, Anna Revenko, "so that she would buy a house in Turkey, where the whole family would move."

The court did not make any decisions after the hearing, which was closed to reporters. The case is expected to continue in May.

Naumov has been at the center of a number of investigations by news outlets into contraband imports and corruption. He appeared in an investigation by Skhemy (Schemes), a joint investigative project run by RFE/RL and UA: Pershy television, into the acquisition of property considered not comparable with the income of a civil servant.

The investigation found that on the day before Russia's invasion in February 2022, Andriy Naumov went abroad.

Naumov has also been charged in Ukraine with embezzlement, misappropriation of funds, fraud, and other charges related to the handling of state funds. Serbia is considering extraditing him to Ukraine.