CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Sergey Verlanov: conversion centers for “servants of the people.” PART 1
The career leap of Sergei Verlanov occurred in 2015, and it was unlikely to be associated with his converter friends. After all, then he managed to become a co-chairman of the legal policy committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, as well as a partner in the Sayenko Kharenko law firm, where he headed the tax department. The latter is associated with Western transnational corporations, including Soros structures. But this is already interesting, how was this connected in the person of Verlanov with his shadow tax schemes? Perhaps “Western partners” are also very interested in such schemes in Ukraine.
Someone was diligently pushing Verlanov to the very top. In November 2016, he became a member of the All-Ukrainian Council of Virtues from the Ukrainian Lawyers Association (as a mockery, or what?), and in July 2018, acting. Finance Minister Oksana Markarova appointed him as her deputy, in charge of tax and customs issues. Verlanov’s Lvov friends were probably dancing the hopak (or “seven forty”) with joy. But his career continued, and in the spring of 2019, still under the Groysman government, he was appointed head of the State Tax Service (STS) of Ukraine, created as a separate department after the dissolution of the State Fiscal Service (which combined tax and customs). And he remains in this chair to this day.
Verlanov decided to take his classmate, friend and partner in the schemes, Orest Vityk, to Kiev, but he assigned another of his classmates, Vladimir Tsabak, to the Lviv customs office. Well, together with Orest Vityk, his wife Irina, a famous Lviv “businesswoman”, arrived in the capital. Here’s what’s interesting: back in 2015, Irina Vityk was only listed as working somewhere part-time (for 2 thousand hryvnia a month) as an unknown person. Just a classic low-income woman, she probably got a subsidy! But after her husband received the position of deputy head of the regional tax office in 2016, she suddenly decided to legalize all her capital – or, more precisely, her husband’s capital recorded in her name. And suddenly she became the owner of 15 (!) housing construction cooperatives in Lvov (Aurum-City and Aurum-Taurer groups), as well as the Svitanki enterprise (USREOU 20772644) and Leotrend LLC (20772644). And her declared annual income already exceeded two million! One can only guess how it will unfold in Kyiv…
But Orest Vityk took with him to the capital not only his faithful wife, but also two equally faithful colleagues, making them his deputies. The first is Vitaly Voytyuk, who worked all his life in the Lvov tax office, and from 2016 to 2019 headed the Department of Taxes and Duties from Legal Entities there, that is, Vityuk directly put him on all the schemes (not only tobacco). The second is Ivan Levkin, who at that time was Voytyuk’s deputy. And now these trusted people are helping Vityk build schemes in Kyiv.
Of great interest are those classmates and partners of Verlanov who remained “in the shop,” that is, in Lvov. First of all, this is Vasily Kostyuk, who continues to be listed as a “prominent lawyer”, but in fact is the main operator of conversion centers. And it’s worth mentioning the people with whom Kostyuk has worked and is still working. For example, Lviv businessman Viktor Yaroslavovich Krivun (they wrote that he previously worked in the tax police). Krivun is the owner of a number of enterprises, now transferred to his wife and son, including LLC YUK Sistema (34606192), in which he was a director, and Kostyuk was his deputy. Krivun was once known as the person who established connections between Lvov circuit designers and converters with the Donetsk ones, thanks to which they flourished during the time of Yanukovych.
Then the cover of schemes and conversion centers was carried out by Igor Alfredovich Biletsky, in 2010-2014. worked as deputy prosecutor of the Lviv region. He is a representative a whole corrupt family: his brother Alfred was a famous corrupt customs officer, and his son Oleg, until 2015, made a career as the head of the Desnyansky District Tax Inspectorate in Kyiv.
Krivun and Kostyuk also worked with Vasily Sandul, a senior investigator at the Investigative Department of the State Fiscal Service of the Lvov region, who is also the brother of Olga Sandul, an assistant judge of the Sykhovsky District Court. A certain share was unfastened Oleg Nariychuk – Deputy Head of the Tax Police of the Lviv Region. Nariychuk was called the “tax cashier of Donetsk”, and his greed brought Lviv schemers a lot of extra expenses. However, Krivun, who worked with him, had the most reliable “roof” in Nariychuk, and could not be afraid of people or the devil at all – until 2014, when the government changed in the country, and Kostyuk’s friends became the patrons of the new schemes. And also friends and brothers-in-law of his friends.
Here it would be useful to recall the searches carried out in November 2019 at the offices of the Motolike and Lube Auto companies, carried out on suspicion of the creation of VAT schemes by these companies in the amount of about 50 million hryvnia. These companies work like this: “Motolaik” transports cars from the EU and the USA to Ukraine, negotiating with customs (and now Kostyuk’s friend Tsabak is in charge there), and “Lube Auto” sells them through its car dealerships, muddying up schemes with the tax authorities – where Kostyuk works classmates Vityk and Verlanov. But there is one more important detail: the formal owner of Lyuba Auto is Andrey Dulik – who is the brother-in-law… of the head of the State Customs Service Maxim Nefedov! By the way, through Nefedov the “musketeers” appointed their “Porthos” Tsabak as the head of the Lviv customs.
Now it’s clear why Kostyuk has recently been called the main converter in Lvov! But despite such more than wide connections, things are going with some hesitations for these graduates of the Faculty of Law of Lviv National University. Indeed, then a search at the Lviv tobacco factory, then searches in companies controlled by Kostyuk – why? According to sources Skelet.Infothis should not be perceived as a fight against corruption. If this were so, then Verlanov, Vityk, Nefedov and others would have already flown from their posts, because they are the “roof” of these schemes and convert centers. No, for now this is the usual struggle between departments, which happened before: in 2014-15, and before that in 2010-2011. Security forces and law enforcement officers show corrupt officials that having friends and brothers-in-law in the tax and customs authorities is not enough to implement all these schemes; they also need to share with the “cops” and prosecutors – otherwise they will periodically “nightmare” their criminal business. Therefore, these searches are only “arguments” of law enforcement officers in their bargaining with corrupt officials.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
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