Former director of a tobacco company suspected of failing to pay 2.3 billion hryvnia in excise taxes
The former head of a well-known tobacco company has been officially charged with intentional tax evasion on an exceptionally large scale.
The suspect is accused of large-scale fraud, including the forgery of excise stamps, the smuggling of products into European Union countries, and causing losses to the state totaling more than 2.3 billion hryvnias.
According to law enforcement officials, the company’s top management used the factory’s legal production capacity for years as a cover for a shadow business.
They organized an illegal cigarette production cycle, selling the cigarettes for cash without recording the sales in official reports. This allowed the operators to completely evade their tax obligations to Ukraine’s state budget.
The main focus of the investigation was a massive shipment of raw materials that had been illegally introduced into industrial circulation for the production of excise goods.
Forensic experts, together with tax officials, have already confirmed the enormous scale of the losses inflicted on the state.
“Under the guise of legitimate production, company officials established a scheme for the illegal manufacture and sale of unaccounted-for tobacco products outside of tax and accounting records, with the aim of evading tax payments to the state budget. A key finding of the investigation in this case is that more than 1,186 metric tons of raw tobacco were processed into cigarettes and sold without paying excise tax. According to the findings of the tax audit and the forensic economic analysis, this is precisely what led to an underpayment of excise tax amounting to over 2.3 billion hryvnias,” wrote Ruslan Kravchenko.
To cover up the large-scale abuses and write off the raw materials, the factory’s management attempted to stage a crime.
They falsified documents regarding the alleged theft of materials by third parties, attempting to blame everything on fabricated force majeure circumstances. However, detectives uncovered this scheme during searches and analysis of the documentation.
Currently, active investigative measures are underway in the criminal proceedings under Part 3 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Detectives from the Economic Security Bureau are gathering evidence and conducting the pretrial investigation under the procedural supervision of prosecutors.
Law enforcement officials are identifying all individuals who may be involved in the operation of this financial scheme.
This was reported by Ruslan Kravchenko, head of the Kyiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office, on his official Telegram channel.
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