Igor Skorokhod
The official website of the President of Ukraine refused to register a petition to dismiss the first deputy head of the Main Directorate of the State Fiscal Service in Kyiv, tax police colonel Igor Skorokhod.
The initiator of the appeal, Maxim Naumak, reported this in a comment to the publication MIR.
"I tried in vain to register my petition. It turned out that my petition "does not meet the requirements established by the Law of Ukraine 'On Citizens' Appeals.' All my subsequent attempts to find out what exactly was wrong with my petition were also unsuccessful," the petitioner recounts.
"Apparently, there's no one at Bankova Street who could even explain to me over the phone what's wrong. The problem probably isn't the form, but the substance: I didn't like the content," suggests Maxim Naumak.
Specifically, in a petition that has never been made public, Ukrainians are calling on the President to dismiss Igor Skorokhod from his position in the State Fiscal Service as an official who worked under Viktor Yanukovych under the leadership of then-Minister of Revenue and Duties Oleksandr Klymenko.
"We believe that Igor Skorokhod, who served under and directly carried out all the instructions of his fugitive godfather, Oleksandr Klimenko, has no right to now use his combatant status, which he received after only six visits to the ATO zone, as a cover and hold a leadership position within the State Fiscal Service," the statement reads.
The petition also reminds the President who Alexander Klimenko is.
"We know the miniature 'Mezhyhirya' he (Oleksandr Klymenko – MIR) built right inside the Ministry of Revenue and Duties building, complete with a salt mine and saunas, 'secret rooms' for ultimate fighting, and a 'safe room' for corruption schemes. We know how special equipment for packaging cash was installed in the basement. We saw a video of Oleksandr Klymenko and then-Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka fleeing Ukraine in panic, trying their best to board a plane at Donetsk airport," the activists recall.
"Are we really going to forget this today and allow Igor Skorokhod, a protégé of one of the country's most corrupt officials, to lead the capital's tax police with impunity and continue his systemic repression of Ukrainian businesses?" the petition's signatories ask. "A native of Luhansk, Igor Skorokhod, like no one else, is mired in Ukraine's corrupt tax system, having risen through the ranks: from 2003 to 2011, when he repressed businesses in Donetsk, to his arrival in Kyiv, where he held positions no lower than deputy head of the State Tax Inspectorate of the Shevchenkivskyi District."
"Therefore, if we truly no longer want to live by the 'laws' of the old regime, Igor Skorokhod must be immediately purged," the statement concludes.
The petition to the President also demands that the results of the investigation into all allegations of corruption and other abuses leveled against Igor Skorokhod by the media be made public as soon as possible. If guilt is established, in addition to lustration, he be held accountable under the law. The feasibility of maintaining a tax police force in Ukraine should also be considered.
"We question the necessity of the tax police as such. As is well known, this agency collects only 2% of all taxes in the country. Ukrainian entrepreneurs pay the remaining 98% voluntarily. Therefore, the economic efficiency of the tax police is zero. We are confident that only after a complete purge of personnel and reform of the State Fiscal Service system itself, built on the principles of extortion and repression, will real change in the country be possible," the statement reads.
"I only hope that such open obstruction of my legitimate right to appeal to my President and be heard is some kind of mechanical misunderstanding. I'm disgusted to even imagine that Skorokhod is being protected by Bankova Street," says Maxim Naumak.
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