The robbery of honest entrepreneurs by corrupt representatives of state fiscal authorities is nothing new. This has been the case throughout Ukraine's years of independence, and it reached unprecedented proportions under Yanukovych. Has anything changed with the victory of the Maidan and our European choice? The story of renowned Ukrainian lawyer Kateryna Tarasova and her numerous clients suggests that it has not. Officials, who should a priori protect businessmen from all sorts of scams, continue to rob the state of millions, and pin their crimes on honest people who know too much.
Today we'll tell the remarkable story of a lawyer who took the risk of defending her clients and business partners from the arbitrary actions of government tax evaders, only to be confronted with a war of extermination from the latter.
The Warehouse Director's Ordeals
The massive scam uncovered by Ekaterina Tarasova, involving the Moscow tax authorities' appropriation and subsequent profitable sale of contraband seized at Ukrainian customs, has been ongoing since September of last year. More on that later. For now, let's just say that early this year, at the height of the revolution, Kyiv tax police arrived at an Odessa warehouse. Valeriy Dobranitsa, the former director of the confiscated goods storage company, suspected nothing, as the tax authorities, using a forged court order, simply took the confiscated property—expensive electronics, appliances, and high-quality clothing. According to the tax authorities, the goods were valued at 16 million hryvnias. However, no one has ever made a precise assessment.
Soon, the unsuspecting warehouse director was subjected to blackmail in the form of criminal prosecution by the very same tax officials. Just a month later, they raided the warehouse again... to take back what they had already seized! The director, understandably, was outraged, as he had handed over everything the previous time, as evidenced by the documents. The tax officials, however, were unfazed by this "obstacle," and conducted a search, during which they simply confiscated documents about their own deal with Dobranica, and subsequently also seized someone else's property, which was also in the warehouse. And the director, now the scapegoat, was accused of stealing the ill-fated confiscated goods.
It's clear that representatives of the now-transformed Ministry of Revenue and Duties, which earned a notorious reputation for bribery under Yanukovych, were extorting yet another bribe from the businessman. Changing the names, while the same bribe-takers remain in office, naturally doesn't change anything. Valeriy Dobranitsa's business partner, the competent attorney Kateryna Tarasova, became his lawyer.
Failed "shakedown"
And the "righteous wrath" of the bribe-taking tax officials, of course, also fell upon the young lawyer, who was pregnant at the time. TSN. Tyzhden journalists were the first to detail the brazen, undisguised abuse in a special report. Incidentally, already in Kyiv, at the height of the victorious "people's revolution," Tarasova's law office and that of her staff were searched, and Tarasova's relatives and some of her clients were also subjected to a "shakedown." According to Tarasova herself, eight or nine completely unfounded searches were carried out in one day, and nothing was seized! Then came surveillance, threats, and extortion.
Fortunately, lawyers from the capital and the Maidan protesters came to Ekaterina's aid. To provide a full picture of what happened, we now give the floor to a participant in the events, Kyiv lawyer Oleg Veremeenko.
The search of Kateryna's office on Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street took place this spring, right around Easter, says O. Veremeenko. "As soon as she informed me about searches at five addresses, I put out a call to all my lawyer friends and the guys from the Maidan. When we arrived, we saw a huge crowd outside the office. The tax police were securely protected by a busload of machine gunners. Maksym Fedosov, an investigator with the Main Investigative Department of what is now the Fiscal Service, was in charge. He immediately announced that they had a court order for the search and demanded that his assistants be allowed into the premises. We, of course, asked the respected investigator to show us the court order. And we immediately noticed that in the order, the judge of the Shevchenkivsky Court had somehow "forgotten" that he was authorizing a search of an office rented by three lawyers! The order simply authorized a search of an ordinary apartment. Meanwhile, all European practice and Ukrainian law indicate that a search of a lawyer's office requires a special court order, with a convincing justification for why the office is being searched, which, of course, contains confidential documents! But our judge's order appears to be to search an ordinary apartment and find some valuables related to the activities of a certain firm. In other words, under the Shevchenkivskyi district judge's order, the tax authorities had no right to search the lawyers' office, let alone even enter it without the tenants' invitation. However, one of the lawyers in the office returned unexpectedly, still confused, and opened the premises with her own key, prompting the entire "law enforcement" fraternity to rush in after her! And then, outright lawlessness ensued. The tax authorities didn't limit themselves to searching for valuables; they began brazenly rummaging through classified documents and hacking computers. But those were different times. Lawyers from the Maidan protests and other Maidan fighters responded to our call and resolutely demanded that the state outlaws retreat peacefully. The entire outrage was captured on video cameras and posted on YouTube.
And the tax officials, shockingly, led by the prosecutor of the capital's prosecutor's office, were forced to leave the office empty-handed. I assure you that if they had resorted to violence, eight machine gunners wouldn't have helped them. About 100 people stood in their way – fellow lawyers and Maidan protesters. After all, if we can treat even lawyers like this, then what kind of Europe are we talking about for Ukraine? Incidentally, during the chaos, I explained to the prosecutor why they're called a "junta" in the East, even though I'm a Ukrainian patriot. And for the same kind of relentless outrage against honest people that they just committed!
However, the state racketeers quickly revealed the real reason for their "searches" for trucks in the offices of lawyers and their clients. According to E. Tarasova, they initially "invented" the figure of $100 "in order to bring the case back on track." Then, they claimed, the persecution would cease.
According to the "concepts" since the time of Yanukovych
Rarely would an honest person withstand such a situation, but to Katerina's credit, she not only withstood it but also uncovered a massive, almost unthinkable scam perpetrated by Moscow tax authorities involving the illegal movement of expensive contraband across the Ukrainian border. The entire scheme had been ongoing for several years and involved a whole group of officials from various agencies.
As knowledgeable sources and documents told Ekaterina, the leadership of the Kyiv tax police managed to establish a real flow of contraband across our state's border, sharing the proceeds and, therefore, securing protection from prosecutors, judges, and some members of parliament.
At first glance, it's hard to believe such a thing could be pulled off. As it turns out, it's not at all difficult in our country.
Imagine a company from Panama, Oxo Network Corporation, selling various small items like photo frames, pens, and so on to the same Ukrainian firm through a representative in Poland. But that's only on paper. In reality, computers, various electronics, alcoholic beverages, and expensive clothing are loaded into trucks at one of the Polish customs warehouses (Brach Pol). These warehouses have long been a favorite destination for smugglers from various countries.
The goods then end up at customs in Lviv. Of course, Lviv customs officials see that these aren't pens or photo frames worth tens of thousands of hryvnias at most, but goods worth, by the most conservative estimates, millions of dollars. The cargo is typically seized, and evidence of such violations is sent to court for subsequent confiscation and for the benefit of the state.
And then, out of the blue, armed tax police from Kyiv descend on the Lviv customs office. They present a warrant for opening a criminal case for tax evasion by the buyer of the goods. They confiscate the goods from the customs officers and transport them to their warehouses. The case then proceeds to the capital's court. Logically, the judges would simply return the contraband, worth millions of dollars, to the state. That would mean budget revenue, pensions, stipends, and assistance to the poor.
But nothing of the sort happens. It turns out that the capital's judges are solemnly returning goods to their owners by their ruling. On what grounds? You ask. Here's the reason. "Unexpectedly," a representative of the purchasing company appears in this case and says: we weren't smuggling, well, the supplier shipped the wrong goods instead of pens and photo frames. Well, it's not our fault! Our judges, the most humane in the world since Soviet times, shed a tear and returned to the "honest" smugglers what customs and tax officials had "unjustly" confiscated. For what reason, we think, there's no need to explain.
The fate of these millions of dollars' worth of cargo remains unknown—no customs clearance, no taxes... However, it's not hard to guess that they're being sold successfully, and the proceeds are shared among everyone—tax officials, prosecutors, and humane judges. This is how the scheme for robbing the state of millions is set up. This is how pensioners and the poor are robbed, and how soldiers are deprived of their meager army rations.
TSN. Tyzhden journalists have three identical court decisions on the return of goods to "unlucky" buyers, issued by the Solomensky and Shevchenkivsky District Courts of Kyiv. The same "error" is at play in this case. The same purchasing company—Garant Torg LLC—and the same tax police officers! And it's the same story everywhere: the goods are stolen by tax officers, but the entrepreneurs who dutifully pay their taxes are accused of the theft. Isn't this like the situation where Gongadze's head was sought by those who cut it off?
Ekaterina Tarasova detailed all of this in detail, using sound legal language, in her complaint to the prosecutor's office. According to our information, several criminal cases are pending against the tax authorities, and the investigation is being obstructed in every possible way. In one of them, Ekaterina Tarasova has already been recognized as a victim.
According to our sources in the prosecutor's office, the main defendants are employees of the Ministry of Revenue and Duties, the inner circle of the former head of the Investigative Department, I.O. Usyk, who is currently on the run, and the brothers Serhiy and Oleksandr Pototsky. According to media reports, one of the brothers is connected to the Kharkiv club "Oplot," which, in turn, was one of the organizers of the armed conflict in Donbas.
And, as independent sources told lawyer Oleg Veremeenko, representatives of Odessa government agencies and Odessa deputies, closely allied with local criminal organizations, have long been involved in the scheme.
Harassment of a pregnant lawyer
The whole point is that even after the multi-stage customs scam was made public, most of these figures remained in their comfortable positions and, in the new era, organized a full-scale persecution of the lawyer, Katya Tarasova. Threats, blackmail, intimidation, and summonses for questioning followed. Katerina was undeterred and, in August, arrived for questioning at the Moscow tax office, calling the Ministry of Revenue's hotline on the way. Outside the office, the same investigator, Maxim Fedosov, attempted to bring the pregnant woman into his office, but, upon seeing a video camera, retreated. He soon appeared with his boss, Ivan Kutsenko, the head of the investigative department. Kutsenko promised to look into the matter.
However, as TSN journalists report, Kutsenko is unlikely to figure it out, or even have time to figure it out. Because the journalists have a ruling from a Sevastopol court, where Kutsenko was found guilty of forcing his subordinates to hand over gold seized from smugglers during searches. According to the investigation's findings, published in August of this year, Kutsenko embezzled 4 kg of gold. The press service of the capital's prosecutor's office informed journalists of this.
In short, the customs fraud case has already migrated to the offices of both the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Verkhovna Rada Anti-Corruption Committee. Its head, MP Viktor Chumak, promises to send the documents to the Prosecutor General's Office immediately after the elections. However, TSN journalists immediately point out that one of the criminal cases in the Kyiv Prosecutor's Office was simply dropped on the ridiculous grounds that it was opened due to Tarasova's lawyer's personal animosity toward an investigator from such an important state agency as the tax service.
Katya gave birth to a son the day after that failed interrogation. The young woman is ready to fight to the bitter end. Rumor has it that those involved in the customs fraud are now being quietly dismissed. They, in turn, continue to fabricate cases against the lawyers. But who will ultimately answer for the state's plunder of millions, for the suffering and loss of health of honest entrepreneurs who pay taxes into the state treasury?
Lawyer Alexander Miroshnik comments on the situation:
During numerous spring searches, I represented Ekaterina Tarasova's partners, the entrepreneurs she defended against tax authorities as a lawyer. I witnessed innocent people accused of stealing contraband goods. During the search, equipment found in their offices was brought to them. It was confiscated, and then someone suddenly appeared, claimed the property, and the property was handed over to this same individual. This was essentially blatant robbery by government officials. During the course of the search, the mother of one of my clients couldn't bear the abuse her son was subjected to and died.
In some cases, we succeeded in winning court cases against the tax authorities. But then we encountered another problem, as old as Ukraine's independence: non-enforcement of court decisions. Under various far-fetched and absurd pretexts, tax police officers refused to enforce court decisions.
I'm probably not saying anything new, but I see the only way out of this problem as the effective implementation of the lustration law. And then, people with a crystal-clear reputation should be hired to work in such a truly important structure as the fiscal service. And those who appoint them to these positions should, in turn, have an even more impeccable track record. Only then will the state create all the conditions for honest and transparent business, and its representatives will not invent pretexts to accuse entrepreneurs of bribes. And they will certainly not be able to accuse innocent people of their own crimes. Will the new government succeed? I don't know, but I'm optimistic about the future.
Sergey Karpenko, Compromising evidence against Ukraine and Russia
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