Wednesday, February 1, became the day of large-scale resonant searches and personnel purges in Ukraine. Whom did the police visit?
Spring will come, we will plant – promised the famous election slogan of Vladimir Zelensky. With landings, however, somehow did not work at all. But already during the war, law enforcement officers suddenly became more active and came with searches and suspicions to officials of various levels. And thanks to these searches, the country learned a lot of interesting things.
Kolomoisky and Avakov
Perhaps the most resonant were the searches of businessman Igor Kolomoisky and former Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Employees of the State Bureau of Investigation came to the ex-minister because of six-year-old contracts with the French Airbus Helicopter, which supplied helicopters to Ukraine. In particular, H-225, which recently crashed the entire leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Brovary.
Avakov, in a media commentary, noted that law enforcement officers formally worked out one of the versions, and contracts with the French were approved by the government and parliament.
Kolomoisky was visiting the SBU and the Economic Security Bureau. The search was carried out as part of an investigation into the Ukrnafta case. We are talking about wasting oil products worth UAH 40 billion and evading customs duties.
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Law enforcers did not seize anything from either Kolomoisky or Avakov and handed over suspicions.
Star of memes and tax
Almost the most resonant was the search at the head of the Kyiv tax Oksana Daty. During searches, the SBI found not only hundreds of thousands of hryvnias, but also lists of expensive wishes for a year.
Oksana Daty is 52 and has dedicated her entire professional career to taxation. For example, she worked as the head of the department of research checks in different districts of Kyiv, the deputy head of the State Tax Inspectorate, and even headed the department for combating money laundering in the State Fiscal Service of Kyiv. A year ago, Datius was lucky – she became acting. Head of the Main Directorate of the State Tax Service in Kyiv.
According to the State Bureau of Investigation, she abused her power and official position, making decisions on non-compliance with the riskiness criteria of taxpayers for a number of enterprises. In addition, according to operational data, she implemented, through her proxies, schemes for artificially inflating gross expenses by some enterprises, doing business without registering sole proprietors, and providing false information about income. According to expert estimates, more than 15 billion hryvnias fell into the shadow circulation.
In another episode, the leadership of the Main Directorate of the State Tax Service in Kyiv is involved in schemes for illegally obtaining VAT refunds, as a result of which more than UAH 30 billion fell into the shadow circulation.
In addition, RBI operatives are also investigating lifestyles and. about. head of the Main Department of the State Tax Service in Kyiv, which does not correspond to the level of her official income: she has three apartments in Kyiv worth about $1 million, a house near Kyiv worth about $200,000, two cars worth about $150,000.
And in the wish lists for the year, the official wrote that she wanted to “make a million”, buy a fur coat, a new handbag and a watch, fly to London and the Maldives.
Medvedchuk’s friend
The Security Service of Ukraine is investigating the participation of construction companies controlled by the People’s Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the banned OPPL party Vadym Stolar in the legalization of funds of Putin’s godfather Viktor Medvedchuk and other sanctioned persons. Because of this, they came to Stolar with a search.
real cases
According to the GPU, in just February 1, suspicions were reported to four officials – the ex-Deputy Minister of Defense and the ex-Minister of Energy and Coal Industry, the current and former officials of the Ministry of Defense. Based on the results of investigative actions, suspicions were reported to the top management of PJSC Ukrtatnafta.
Window dressing or system work?
After the resonance with the searches, government officials, for example, the head of the Servant of the People faction in parliament, David Arakhamia, promised that “the country will change during the war,” and if someone is not ready for change, then “the state itself will come and help them change” .
However, what legal perspective do all the cases in which searches were carried out today have? During the searches at the head of the tax office in Kyiv, she was not even handed a suspicion.
“It will be very difficult to prove Kolomoisky’s crime in the economic case of Ukrtatnafta with a complicated form of ownership and a lot of involved legal entities. The only real prospect there is the case of Defense Ministry officials and their contracts. First of all, because a lot of work in this area has already been carried out by NABU. But and this can take months, and possibly years,” the UP quotes one of the heads of anti-corruption bodies.
Political scientist Vladimir Fesenko considers the motivation for the searches to be “clearly political”. According to him, in Ukraine, searches have not so much a procedural effect as “media and political”.
“This is a signal to society, political elites, who have problems, who are under investigation, “stay away from these people, because otherwise you may also have problems with law enforcement.” The signal, of course, to the defendants themselves in these cases, ”added Fesenko.
However, law enforcers claim that they have begun a “crusade” against the internal enemy. According to the head of the SBU, Vasily Malyuk, we are talking about training people who, by their actions, harm the security of the state in various areas: traitors to Ukraine and agents of the Russian special services; representatives of organized crime; officials, officials and corrupt officials who undermine the country’s economy and the stable functioning of the military-industrial complex.
“We are fulfilling the task set by the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and simultaneously delivering a global strike against the internal enemy. And a clear evidence of this is the mass searches, the presentation of suspicions and the detention of malefactors of various calibers. This is only the first stage of the comprehensive and systematic work that the Security Service is already carrying out “And we don’t plan to stop! Every criminal who dares to harm Ukraine, especially in the conditions of war, must clearly realize that we will put handcuffs on his hands. The SBU will make every effort to do this,” Malyuk said.
