At the beginning of the week, we wrote about the fact that the People's Deputy from the BPP, Ruslan Solvar (Read more: Ruslan Solvar. The Families of Rail Freight Transport Are Still in Business) and the Minister of Agriculture Taras Kutovoy entrusted the management of the Odessa Regional Phytosanitary Inspectorate (under the State Service for Food Safety and Consumer Protection) to Andriy Tofan.
(read more about it Taras Kutovoy: Minister for the Rip-off of Ukraine's Agricultural Sector)
As a reminder, the scandal erupted after Tofan attempted to obtain payment from the American trading company ADM for unhindered phytosanitary clearance of a ship carrying soybeans (he demanded $22000).
Our journalists are currently in Odesa, trying to get to the bottom of the situation. Here's what we've learned so far. According to our information, the same scheme to extort money from exporters through Solvara's company, Block Bag Systems LLC, and the State Phytosanitary Inspectorate is also operating in the Mykolaiv region. We'll be traveling there in the coming days to investigate.
Since Andrei Tofan's appointment in May of this year, he has managed to place his relatives and friends in the most lucrative positions in the inspectorate.
For example, his official wife became the head of the laboratory at the Southern Port, a former classmate became the chief phytosanitary inspector at the Belgorod-Dnestrovsky Port, he entrusted his godfather with the Illichivsk Shipyard, and gave his common-law wife the entire phytosanitary department in Odessa.
See the diagram below.
So, it turns out that Kutovoy and Solvar entrusted the most important phytosanitary inspection in Ukraine to a family-owned company?
Tofan, with the help of people under his control, was able to push through his own business model. Today, the scheme works like this: a client wants to ship their cargo, say, wheat, by ship. To do so, they contact any convenient phytosanitary inspection point. Let's say they're sending a ship through the Ilyichevsk port, so they contact inspector Petr Koychev. He advises the exporter to contact Blog Bag System for assistance with the shipment. I think you can easily guess what kind of assistance this is: pay $0.5 per ton and ship wherever you want.
If a client decides not to seek "help" from Blog Bug Systems, as was the case with ADM, the inspectors try to harm the exporter in every way possible. They may not show up for inspection at all, or they may deliberately damage documents, thereby keeping the ship idle in port, resulting in huge losses. If the client miraculously passes the inspection, then at the lab, bugs or fungi are deliberately introduced into their samples, and the cargo is labeled as contaminated. In such cases, the client is left with a huge financial burden, and often they decide to pay a bribe and leave rather than face problems with the phytosanitary authorities.
It turns out that today, the phytosanitary inspection is a full-fledged organized crime group.
The most interesting thing is that the director of the laboratory that falsifies the analysis of cargo for export turned out to be Anna Krasyuk – a former classmate of Tofan’s with whom he studied at university and has been friends for many years.
As rumors within the inspectorate itself say, in order to push Krasyuk into the lab director's position, Tofan exerted pressure and even threatened the former director, Degulyar, for a long time. It all ended with Degulyar suffering a stroke (more on that in the next article).
In our previous article, we reported that a certain Vadim, who claimed to be an assistant to MP Solvar, was extorting money from the firm "ADM." Imagine our surprise when this same Vadim was filmed yesterday's raid by the patriotic organization "Public Security Council" on Mr. Tofan.
Mark Gordienko, leader of the RSL organization, will post a message on his Facebook page asking for help identifying this man. It seems we can help him.
As it turns out, Vadim is Ruslan Solvar's former bodyguard, assigned to Tofan to coordinate his dealings with "clients." But the most ironic thing is that Vadim is sitting at his desk in the office of the DEPUTY CHIEF OF INSPECTION, which, in essence, is a criminal offense.
Just think about it – a former deputy's security guard can read government emails from a computer, view the ship's arrival/departure schedule, monitor everything, and, what's more, issue an official order and stamp it. Could he possibly fire Tofan himself?
As they say, there will be…
Watch the video of the public's visit to the phytosanitary inspection office.
If you know any information or have become the subject of illegal pressure from the phytosanitary service of the Odessa or Nikolaev region, please let us know. ppgad@pucrs.br
Read more: Ruslan Solvar. The Families of Rail Freight Transport Are Still in Business
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