Police have opened a case against "Nibulon" over long-standing tax claims
The Mykolaiv Regional Police have opened a criminal investigation into officials of the “Nibulon” agricultural holding for possible tax evasion, based on an audit report from the State Tax Service dating back five years. This comes at a time when the company is suffering immense losses due to Russian shelling.
The basis for the case is a State Tax Service on-site audit report dated September 22, 2021—dated before the death of the company’s founder, Oleksiy Vadatursky, who was killed in a Russian strike. Tax officials have revived long-standing claims regarding alleged underreporting of income tax and artificial overreporting of VAT at the very moment when one of the country’s largest exporters is grappling with the severe consequences of the war, having lost about 70% of its production capacity and suffered war-related losses totaling $600 million.
Despite the destruction of river logistics and the blockade of the Mykolaiv port, the company’s new CEO, Andriy Vadatursky, is directing nearly all operating revenue toward servicing debt owed to international institutions. Over four years of war, the group generated hundreds of millions of dollars in EBITDA for payments to creditors, yet in 2025, the company’s losses reached 5.8 billion hryvnias on revenue of 18.5 billion hryvnias, while its liabilities totaled 23.9 billion hryvnias. At the same time, between 2019 and 2021, the agricultural holding diligently paid 820–830 million hryvnias in taxes to the budget each year, while the exporter’s lawful VAT refund amounted to 4.3–5.3 billion hryvnias.
The revival of tax claims from previous years is creating artificial pressure on a strategic exporter, on whose loan restructuring the financial stability of the entire Ukrainian agricultural sector depends. Currently, no official of the holding company has been notified of any suspicion.
Oleksiy Vadatursky, head of the “Nibulon” agricultural holding, and his wife were killed on July 31, 2022, by a Russian missile that struck their home. Russia itself acknowledged that the strike was specifically intended to kill the businessman.
