Almost 20 million on cards with an income of 187 thousand: court reveals details of financial machinations of “polozhenets” Naumenko

Almost 20 million on cards with an income of 187 thousand: court reveals details of financial machinations of “polozhenets” Naumenko

From 2020 until the beginning of October 2025, UAH 19.6 million was transferred from identified counterparties to three open bank accounts in PrivatBank belonging to 61-year-old Ihor Naumenko, a native of Voznesensk district, nicknamed “Naum,” who is considered the so-called “polozhenets” (overseer) of criminal-world representatives in Mykolaiv, Odesa and Kherson regions.

This information is contained in the materials of the court register, writes Detective-Info.

It follows that law-enforcement officers obtained data on debit transactions on the “thieves’ overseer’s” cards from the National Agency for Finding, Tracing and Managing Assets Obtained from Corruption and Other Crimes (ARMA). However, even theoretically balancing the “white” financial saldo to zero in Ihor’s case proved to be a task with an asterisk. According to tax authorities, over a quarter of a century (from 2000 to 2025) “Naum” officially earned a total of UAH 187,000.

According to the investigation, the real source of the funds on Naumenko’s cards may be money he received from extortion victims. It is believed that the millions from the bank accounts, as well as cash, were used by the influential criminal figure to purchase vehicles for money-laundering purposes. The vehicles in question are five cars that were legally registered to members of “Naum’s” family but used by him for personal needs: a 2023 Lexus LX 500D, a 2023 Honda M-NV, a 2022 Toyota BZ4X, a 2017 Lexus LX 450D and a 2017 Toyota Camry.

Earlier, Detective-Info reported in the article “Voronivskyi driver” that in mid-summer 2025 law-enforcement officers detained the previously convicted “polozhenets” in Mykolaiv and charged him with exerting criminal influence (Part 3, Article 255-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and extortion (Part 4, Article 189 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). Since then Naumenko has been held in custody in a Kyiv pre-trial detention facility (where at the end of January 2026 the criminal was served with another suspicion notice), and in the first ten days of June the court ordered his transfer to Mykolaiv.

The decision was preceded, as already noted in Detective-Info materials, by the submission to the court of an indictment against Ihor Naumenko and his accomplices. In addition to the above-mentioned charges of extortion and exerting criminal influence, the case also investigated an episode of possible money laundering (Part 2, Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) by “Naum” and his financial transactions.

As previously reported by Detective-Info, investigators believe that “Naum” accumulated the “thieves’ common fund” in cryptocurrency wallets on various exchanges, after which the virtual funds were converted into cash and stored at the currency-exchange point of “money-changer” Yuriy Babych. Court materials also mention another probable “assistant” of Naumenko in conducting financial operations with a “criminal bent” — Yuriy Onos, 64, general director of Trans-Expo, a company engaged in grain transshipment at the port of Reni.

(Yuriy Onos)

It is known that during a search in July 2025, correspondence found on Onos’s phone in the WhatsApp messenger revealed the distribution of funds, including to persons with the criminal status of “thief in law.” Law-enforcement officers suspect that the accounts of Yuriy’s companies were used under the guise of legitimate business activities to channel criminally obtained funds. By court decision, his devices and USD 37,000 in cash seized from Yuriy Onos have been seized.