The Presidential Office is on the brink of another scandal. Its "detonator" was the participation of a controversial figure in the competition for the position of head of the State Tax Service, writes Anticorrosive
The First Aide to the President of Ukraine, Serhiy Shefir, is lobbying for the appointment of the head of the State Tax Service, Oleksandr Kucherenko, a seasoned corrupt official. There are two possible motives: either to have "their own" head of the State Tax Service, or to block the personnel competition. In either case, a major scandal is inevitable.
On Friday, March 26, the National Agency for Civil Service Issues released the list of candidates accepted to participate in the competition for the position of Head of the State Tax Service. According to the agency, nine candidates have been accepted:
Among them:
- current Chairman of the State Tax Service Alexey Lyubchenko;
- former head of the Office of Large Taxpayers of the State Fiscal Service Evgeny Bambizov;
- former Deputy Minister of Finance, CEO of PJSC Ukrainian Financial Housing Company Vasily Shkurakov;
- current deputy chairmen of the State Tax Service Natalia Ruban and Evgeny Oleynikov;
- former head of the Main Directorate of the State Fiscal Service in Kyiv, Dmitry Zenin;
- employee of the Main Directorate of the State Tax Service in the Transcarpathian region Vasily Simchera;
Ukrtransgaz employee Vyacheslav Fedorov; - former head of the Kyiv branch of the State Property Fund, Alexander Kucherenko.
Clearly, all these people won't be competing for the currently modest salary of 29,400 hryvnias approved by the Cabinet of Ministers. At stake is one of the most influential positions in the country. This position could become both a springboard for a meteoric political career (for the vain) and a source of quick enrichment (for the materialistic). And if the occupant of the top job is both greedy and vain...
If you look at the list of candidates for the high-ranking position through the prism of its corruption appeal, the name "Kucherenko" immediately catches your eye. Because the presence of Alexander Evgenievich Kucherenko on the list of candidates discredits both the quality of the selection process for this position and the competition itself.
Here is why.
"Chicks of the Nest" by Alexander Klimenko
Today, former "tax official" Oleksandr Kucherenko is known behind the scenes in the Verkhovna Rada and the Presidential Office as a "tax expert." He has recently been increasingly "consulting" individual members of parliament from the Servant of the People party on fiscal policy matters. He also promotes supposedly progressive ideas about the "Europeanization" of the fiscal service. For example, he claims that the budget's current tax arrears are due to the fact that the state has four agencies responsible for collecting taxes and fees: tax, fiscal, customs, and audit. The situation could easily be remedied by merging all four agencies into a single agency. Then the treasury would overflow and the tangerines would bloom...
Kucherenko, for some reason, forgets to point out that the idea of a super-mega-fiscal agency with unlimited powers had already been implemented in Ukraine once before—by Viktor Yanukovych's favorite fiscal official, Oleksandr Klymenko. That same, now fugitive, Oleksandr Klymenko, whose tenure coincided with the rise of Oleksandr Kucherenko's own career:
That is why in the narrow circles of the management (ex-management) employees of the tax service Alexander Kucherenko He is known as an "expert" in a completely different field—the very one where they practice "twisting," bribery, extortion, and "cash." And A. Kucherenko himself is a product of a vicious, corrupt system in which the trends were set by Klimenko, and later— Roman Nasirov. It was simply impossible to work in this system in a “fat” leadership position (biography above) and not be involved in criminal schemes.
This is confirmed by the series of scandals involving Kucherenko. He, understandably, keeps a low profile, but they will inevitably surface during the so-called special investigation ("archives don't burn!").
During his tenure as First Deputy Head of the State Fiscal Service in Kyiv Oblast, A. Kucherenko was embroiled in at least five corruption scandals. The State Bureau of Investigation and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) conducted searches at his premises as if they were his work.
Thus, Oleksandr Yevgenyevich appointed his "man," Volodymyr Zherebko, as head of the Brovary United State Tax Inspectorate. Soon after, officers in uniform raided his residence. The event was so extraordinary that then-Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko "reported" on it: "Yesterday, searches were conducted at the workplaces and residences of the heads of the Brovary Tax Inspectorate and at the 'offices' of six enterprises registered at the same address—a pig farm—that are owed a VAT reimbursement of 160 million hryvnias. Of this, almost 100 million hryvnias had already been approved by the Brovary State Tax Inspectorate," Yuriy Lutsenko reported on Facebook. During the searches at the residence of the head of the Brovary United State Tax Inspectorate, 180,000 euros and over $100,000, which had not been included in the e-declaration, were seized..."
The Prosecutor General also emphasized that the regional branch of the State Fiscal Service had not conducted an audit of the validity of the VAT refund claim (hello, Kucherenko!). This was only possible because V. Zherebko accepted bribes in the interests of his patron, A. Kucherenko, who had placed the Donetsk tax official in a lucrative position.
Mr. Kucherenko also chaired the commission for the development of risky businesses. Kucherenko's main "business" as a tax official was creating criteria (conditions) that would classify businesses as risky in the accounting records, and his own people would then "storm" them. These people, for a bribe, would then "help" the businessmen "get out of the situation" into which the tax authorities had deliberately "driven" them. This is how Kucherenko got rich.
But there were also some missteps: a number of businessmen contacted the State Bureau of Investigation and the Security Service of Ukraine.
The State Bureau of Investigation responded quickly, opening a criminal investigation into A. Kucherenko as the main suspect and conducting three searches. With the arrival of the new government, the defendants managed to slow down the investigation, but the case remains open.
There is also another criminal case, No. 62018100000000052, dated December 28, 2018, in which A. Kucherenko is implicated as an official who provided cover for the illegal activities of a number of companies. It is also open:
Another interesting source of information about A. Kucherenko is the "departmental" Telegram channels. They are called "departmental" because their audience is specific—mostly tax officials, auditors, and former "tax police" employees. P. Telegram channel activity related to the competition. There are two popular Telegram channels, both owned by former top tax officials: "Don Quixote" by Yevgeny Bambizov (see list of candidates), and "VIY.Ukraine" by the former head of the State Tax Service.
The recent increase in activity of these channels is due to the fact that tax service officials, having learned of a candidate like Kucherenko, began leaking information about his crimes en masse. This is because his level of "professionalism" and corruption are well known among his colleagues and businessmen in the capital region.
Let us allow ourselves a couple of characteristic quotes:
"A few words about Kucherenko, the candidate for the post of head of the State Tax Service. His entire service in the Tax Service would be drab and unremarkable if not for one striking fact from his work at the Svyatoshinsky Tax Inspectorate in Kyiv.
In short, a group of enterprising comrades, along with Alexander Evgenievich, decided to make a quick buck by injecting no less than 4 billion UAH of fictitious VAT into the system, amounting to over 24 billion UAH in total turnover, which at the time exceeded the entire monthly turnover of the businesses registered with the Svyatoshinsky Tax Authority.
We can only guess what reward Kucherenko received; by the way, he was not the organizer and brains behind the operation.
Later, we will definitely tell you about all the players in this combination, what role A. Gmyrin played in all of this, and why he is trying so hard to push Kucherenko into the position.
We suggest that law enforcement agencies look into this matter, especially since the offense is serious and the statute of limitations has not yet expired.
Below are the names of the companies participating in the scheme. The first six companies generated tax credits and passed them on to the next six companies.
(Source: Telegram channel “Don Quixote”).
And it seems there will be many more such “memories”.
It seems a mystery how a man with such a background wasn't afraid to participate in the competition for the position of Ukraine's chief tax official. He was surely aware that any scandals involving him would likely be exposed by his former colleagues. In fact, Oleksandr Kucherenko's self-confidence has a perfectly rational explanation: he's not participating in the competition—he was "put" into it.
Who are these influential people?
Directly behind Oleksandr Kucherenko (his supervisor and senior partner) is Andriy Gmyrin, a former influential tax official, one of the heads of the tax police (2013-2015), and a veteran schemer from the Yanukovych presidency. He is known for masterminding tax evasion schemes (!) for Vitaliy Khomutynnik (personally) and Oleksandr Klymenko (personally). Another of Gmyrin's quirks from his time as head of the infamous tax police was "selling" tax credits to clients in exchange for bribes.
Today, Gmyrin positions himself publicly as an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at the University of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine and a tax expert working on tax reform.
Andriy Gmyrin's current boss is Serhiy Shefir, the First Aide to the President of Ukraine, to whom Gmyrin is an advisor. The media now informally refer to Gmyrin as the "tax overseer" for the Presidential Office.
Experts attribute the "revival" and possible career advancement of Alexander Kucherenko at the State Tax Service to the patronage of Shefir and Gmyrin.
A rise that will certainly lead to a series of scandals similar to those that have rocked Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office since the appointment of Oleh Tatarov to the Presidential Administration.
Because A. Kucherenko has a strong reputation as a crook. He was ignominiously expelled from the system, and is now trying to return and resort to "schemes" and "flows," "cashing out," "convertibles," and the ever-manual VAT refund process in Ukraine.
Because this official was not remembered for anything else.
Because this person simply doesn’t know how to do anything else.
The school is not the same.
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Oleg Dovzhenko
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