For over 20 years, Maria Ivanovna has been known in the town of Irpin, near Kyiv, as a lottery seller. She's brought great fortune to dozens of local residents. So much so that before selling a ticket, she can even offer advice to a novice player, at the very least on reliable omens. But a month ago, her experience didn't save her from a very unpleasant experience. Police officers showed up at her lottery shop and rudely ordered her to leave. They claimed she was running an illegal business, swindling money from poor people, and, in general, running a gambling den. The elderly woman couldn't hide her tears. She couldn't understand why, for the first time in so many years, she was being raided, and insulted to boot. She simply didn't know she was witnessing a cunning plan that was currently being implemented across the country.
But before revealing this plan, let's ask another question: could the Ministry of Finance voluntarily forego half a billion hryvnias in taxes? The question seems odd in these times. The government is constantly declaring a lack of funds in the state budget. But the answer becomes less clear-cut when you consider that the Ministry of Finance is just one element in a cunning scheme aimed at establishing control over approximately 2 billion hryvnias in annual revenues by an influential financial and political group. At this point, the Ministry of Finance, as they say, might be able to make some headway.
Apparently, the current corporate raid on the lottery business was planned last year, immediately after the government was formed following the Revolution of Dignity. While Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk vowed to implement rapid reforms, one of his closest friends and fellow party members, Andriy Ivanchuk, began exploring attractive financial niches. In addition to public procurement tenders and Ukrzaliznytsia, the lottery business was one of them. Fortunately, Ivanchuk could count on administrative leverage—he and Yatsenyuk had been close friends since their days at Chernivtsi University.
In fact, it was then that the Ministry of Finance began to behave very strangely. On the one hand, who better than it to think about replenishing the treasury? On the other, the Ministry, contrary to legal requirements, refused to renew the licenses of state lottery operators. Thus, an entire industry, which brings in approximately half a billion hryvnias annually to the state budget, was threatened with liquidation. It was obvious that someone in the government leadership was covering up this paradoxical behavior of the state agency. Nevertheless, the state lottery operators continued operating, litigated against the Ministry of Finance to resolve the licensing issue, and continued to contribute substantial sums to the state budget. It's worth noting that the Ukrainian company MSL is currently the country's largest payer of military tax, which finances the needs of the Ukrainian army in the ATO zone.
Realizing that it would be difficult to conceal the Finance Ministry's paradoxical behavior from the media and public for long, the Yatsenyuk-Ivanchuk team launched a new attack. This time, the blow to the lottery industry was dealt by law enforcement agencies. Forcing the Ministry of Internal Affairs to conduct nationwide raids without President Petro Poroshenko's knowledge was impossible. This problem was resolved at a meeting where the head of state was presented with inaccurate information. It was claimed that, firstly, all lottery operators in Ukraine were operating illegally, and secondly, they were all owned by Russian businesses and were funding militants in the LPR and DPR. In response, the lottery operators unanimously provided information about their shareholders, and it turned out that only one of the three was Russian. Furthermore, all of them publicized the legality of their operations and the substantial contributions they made to the state budget. But this did not stop a new wave of corporate raids. In December 2014, a wave of raids on lottery outlets swept across Ukraine.
Andriy Ivanchuk's final plan soon became clear. He exposed himself in the Verkhovna Rada when he began openly lobbying for a bill that would transfer the monopoly on lotteries in Ukraine to Oschadbank. It is headed by another friend of Arseniy Yatsenyuk's from his student days, Andriy Pyshnyy (read more about him: Andriy Pyshnyy: Yatsenyuk's Godfather and the Killer of Oschadbank ) . The plan is that after receiving a monopoly license, Oschadbank will enter into agreements with private agent firms that will conduct lotteries on its behalf and under its control. This is where a group of friends from Chernivtsi will gain access to a business with an annual revenue of over 2 billion hryvnias.
It appears that only the president can prevent this scenario from coming to fruition. After all, he was once misled to justify the current crackdown on a legally operating market. Meanwhile, while the head of state remains silent, the losses to the state budget due to the Ministry of Internal Affairs' attack on lottery operators and the closure of their retail outlets are already amounting to tens of millions of hryvnias. These losses would certainly be useful for Ukrainian soldiers in the ATO zone.
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