Acting Deputy Head of the State Tax Service Yevgeny Sokur, hiding behind "digitalization", is stopping enterprises until he receives compensation. With some, he has already gone into the second and third round.

People’s Deputy of Ukraine Danylo Getmantsev is a figure that entrepreneurs (especially small and medium businesses) use to scare their children. It is with the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy that any initiatives to change the rules of the game between the state and business, increase the tax burden and expand the possibilities of pressure from regulatory and law enforcement agencies on enterprises are associated. Getmantsev does not hide the fact that he "solves the issue" with the tax authorities using the so-called "telephone law".

Currently, the media is actively discussing bill No. 11416 on increasing taxes and fees for businesses. Among the main initiatives are increasing the military tax rate on personal income from 1.5% to 5%, introducing a military tax for individual entrepreneurs in the amount of 800 UAH per month, and introducing a military tax for legal entities and individual entrepreneurs of the 3rd group in the amount of 1% of income. Getmantsev is one of the main commentators and lobbyists of this bill, but advocates replacing the 1% turnover tax with an increase in VAT (and we will return to this point separately below).

And this increase occurs suddenly, urgently, explained only by the need to increase spending on the war, without any real attempts to improve the life of business, reducing corruption at customs, in the tax service and reducing the pressure of security forces on businesses. At the same time, Ukraine in the rating of "hellish tax legislation" (Tax Hells Index from The 1841 Foundation) remains in the worst positions - 4th place in 2023 after 5th place in 2022.

Why do geese scream?

Getmantsev is known for using the phrase "The art of collecting taxes is to pluck a goose so that it does not scream" in his work. In 2024, Ukrainian businessmen began adding a continuation:

- But the goose is screaming!

- Oh, that’s because I f@cked him...

And the last verb best describes what is happening between the acting deputy chairman of the State Tax Service Yevgeny Sokur and Ukrainian business. In short, this official, who received the position as a protégé of Getmantsev (formerly his assistant), instead of the declared digitalization of processes, turned on the full scheme of manual blocking of the work of enterprises by canceling licenses. Business has known about this for a long time, but prefers silence and the transfer of the specified amount of "ransom" in an "envelope" in order to resume production. But there are those who speak openly about the existence of the scheme. For example, back in 2022, distilleries announced this scheme.

"The revocation of the license is not based on actual violations, but on a simple inconsistency of the current legislation," Informator reported, citing the example of a distillery in the village of Krasnaya Sloboda in the Kiev region, which "has been operating since 1881, has outlived the tsar, Hitler, the Bolsheviks, and the like. However, it risks, unfortunately, not outliving Sokur and Getmantsev."

On February 20, the State Tax Service issued an order, signed by Sokur, to cancel the license for alcohol production at Krasnoslobodsky Distillery LLC. The reason for this was that the company had an insufficient number of cameras installed, according to the inspectors.

Then the problem was even raised at the level of the Verkhovna Rada. According to the head of the parliamentary Temporary Investigative Commission for the Protection of Investors, Galina Yanchenko, the law and regulations do not specify what a “technological cycle” is and what “stages of production” at which video surveillance should be installed are being discussed.

In response to a journalistic inquiry, the State Tax Service reported that “each enterprise has its own individual scheme for installing 24-hour video surveillance systems for the production and distribution of ethyl alcohol at excise warehouses where ethyl alcohol is produced.” The journalists concluded that this uncertainty gives the tax service many reasons to revoke a license at any time.

"For example, the tax authorities will come to us tomorrow and say: why don’t you have cameras in your toilets? And what will we say in response?" they noted at the Krasnoslobodsky Distillery.

In the end, the company managed to get the order of the State Tax Service to cancel the license cancelled in court, but it took more than a year. Due to similar actions by the tax service, Bershad Lux (Vinnytsia Oblast), Kholminsky Distillery (Chernihiv Oblast) and Mezhiritsky Vitamin Plant (Kirovohrad Oblast) also stopped operating that year.

"Nobody demanded a bribe from us directly. They counted on us to figure out what to do. We are sure that if we had offered the tax authorities money ourselves (we know that some of our colleagues do this), they would have immediately returned our license. But we did not do this," the distillers explain.

At the Krasnoslobodsky Distillery they note that due to the actions of the tax authorities and personally Yevgeny Sokur, the state budget has lost approximately UAH 500 million in excise tax due to the downtime of the enterprise. It is precisely the money that is so lacking in the budget, which is why Getmantsev considers it necessary to raise taxes.

"And do you think that anyone stopped the extortion by threatening to block the license? Of course not! Some people have been approached for it for the second time, and for others - for the third time," says our interlocutor, who is involved in the alcohol production industry.

In addition to the distilleries, PJSC Ukrtatnafta also appealed the tax authority’s actions to cancel the license in court. In addition, criminal proceedings were initiated against Sokur for obstructing the fulfillment of the Defense Ministry’s mobilization tasks for the production and supply of fuel for the needs of the army.

The case was opened under Part 3 of Article 365 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine - for abuse of office. Sokur issued two identical orders dated October 26, 2022, by which PJSC Ukrtatnafta was deprived of its license. The documents had an identical number and date, but the grounds for revoking the license were different. One - the company’s allegedly without legal grounds refusal to allow tax authorities to conduct an audit. The second - failure to pay the next payment for the license within 30 days from the date of suspension of the license.

Sokur is just Getmantsev’s “gasket”

The Cabinet of Ministers appointed Yevgeny Sokur as acting deputy head of the State Tax Service in May 2022, but since then you will not find any information about him on the official website of the tax service. There is not even a photo in the "Management" section.

Sokur’s appointment is a case where a person without relevant experience, but with the status of Getmantsev’s former assistant, ended up in a responsible position. In 2023, a year after Sokur’s appointment, Getmantsev said that "there were no applicants for this position," but even then he could not explain what Sokur does in the State Tax Service and what his functional responsibilities are.

Sokur came to power along the same path that Getmantsev once took - from an assistant to a people’s deputy to a high-ranking appointee. Only Getmantsev was an assistant to the people’s deputy Volodymyr Sivkovych, who was charged with treason by the State Bureau of Investigation in July 2022. Getmantsev also worked for Sivkovych’s companies and provided legal support to businesses.

After his appointment, Sokur immediately found himself in a scandal with the mass blocking of tax invoices in manual mode, which could be eliminated for 1% of the total amount indicated in them. The scandal erupted after the State Bureau of Investigation caught two heads of the Kirovohrad tax service red-handed taking a bribe, and during a search of their place of residence, they found millions more hryvnias of "black cash". According to Nina Yuzhanina, a member of the Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, 47.7% of enterprises faced the problem of blocking tax invoices.

"Evgeny Sokur is responsible for blocking invoices across the country. He is the acting deputy chairman of the State Tax Service. Officially, he also oversees the excise tax, business fines - that is, all the most scandalous areas," the "Groshi" project says in its story.

To cover up the openly corrupt reason for the appointment, Getmantsev and Sokur launched a PR campaign in which they presented the latter as a young reformer promoting the digitalization of the tax service (while maintaining the practice of manual management). Thus, Getmantsev’s minion promised to "hit corruption with digitalization" - to launch an electronic system that would allegedly break all existing schemes. But this remained a promise without deadlines, responsible persons and contractors.

One of the most striking examples of Sokur’s whitewashing was the story of an allegedly planned and foiled attack on him in August 2023. It is noteworthy that it was not the police or the tax service who first reported it, but Getmantsev personally. Allegedly, the attackers were trying to "take revenge" on Sokur for the "loss of business." The "suspects" were even detained, but the case came to no conclusion, despite its disclosure "hot on the heels."

At the same time, Getmantsev is trying to distance himself from Sokur. They last appeared together publicly at an economic forum in June 2023.

Master 7%. Sokur’s main task for Getmantsev is to protect VAT schemes

Despite the scandalous nature of the above-mentioned schemes for blocking tax invoices and direct blocking of enterprises due to the cancellation of licenses, the most profitable "business" in the Getmantsev-Sokur duo is the schemes around the value-added tax (VAT). In this case, it is worth mentioning Getmantsev’s interest in replacing the 1% tax on the turnover of legal entities and 3rd group sole proprietors in the new bill with an increase in VAT (and the amount of the increase is still subject to agreement). The higher the VAT rate in Ukraine, the more those like Getmantsev, who are involved in regulating these processes, will be able to earn on the schemes.

The biggest "earnings" are from VAT refunds, which depend entirely on decisions made manually by tax officials. Getmantsev’s direct connection to these schemes can be traced not only through Sokur, but also through the former head of the Kyiv city tax service, Oksana Datiy, whom Getmantsev defended even after the State Bureau of Investigation exposed her illegal enrichment in the amount of at least $1.4 million. It was her wish list that Ukrainians mocked in February 2023 - a million dollars, a sable fur coat, an expensive Breguet watch, a vacation in the Maldives, and a high position in the tax service.

According to the State Bureau of Investigation, Datiy made a decision on non-compliance with the risk criteria of taxpayers for a number of enterprises for money, which brought more than 15 billion hryvnia into the shadows, and in another episode she was involved in the illegal reimbursement of VAT, as a result of which more than 30 billion hryvnia ended up in the shadows.

And Getmantsev defended Datiy, stating that there is no need to reboot the tax service’s management.

"Everyone knows that it is no secret that Mr. Getmantsev also installed the current head of the tax service. And he is in excellent contact with this detained Mrs. Datiy. It is no secret," said Censor.NET editor Yuriy Butusov, noting that the episode with Datiy is only the tip of the iceberg.

"Removing a business from the risk list costs 3-4 thousand dollars. Accelerated refund of white VAT costs 10%, and black VAT costs about 30%. The whole system was built in such a way that the entrepreneur was forced to ask the tax office for something. This is the whole economic logic of corruption," explained Andriy Dligach, head of the Council of the Coalition of Business Communities for the Modernization of Ukraine.

Businessmen from different spheres confirm the prices cited by Dligach, and also independently of each other say that 7% of the working VAT refund schemes go directly to Getmantsev. That is why Getmantsev is interested in preserving the existing network of “his” managers in the tax service, over which stands his minion Sokur.

"Either put on your panties or take off your cross"

The scheme with acting heads of the tax service, including Yevgeny Sokur in the top management, allows Getmantsev to control financial flows and schemes. The demands of business to remove Getmantsev or Sokur from their positions, despite all the scandals, remain ignored by the Cabinet of Ministers, the Office of the President and the leadership of the parliament. Sokur has been working as an acting head for more than two years and what achievements can he boast of in his position? Dozens of closed enterprises and billions that the Ukrainian budget did not receive during the war?

At the same time, Getmantsev is lobbying for an increase in the tax burden on businesses and citizens, which will immediately affect the level of prices for goods and services, giving more opportunities for VAT refund schemes, which Sokur will continue to cover up, putting pressure on businesses and businessmen who decide not to remain silent. On the one hand, there are fairy tales about the interests of the state, and on the other, there are black schemes, kickbacks, business closures, and tax shortfalls. Like in the old joke, when law enforcement officers during a raid found a priest with prostitutes in a sauna and the detective says: "Dear sir, either put on your underwear or take off your cross."

And as long as Sokur remains in charge of the tax service, no “cosmetic” reforms and changes will cover up the corrupt nature of the existing system.

There is another interesting point in this story – does President Zelensky know about all these illegal and fraudulent machinations, primarily with VAT, of Getmantsev and Sokur? If not, then how and, most importantly, where will these skilled goose pluckers end up doing their business?!