As part of measures to combat investment fraud in Kyiv, searches were carried out in call centers, suspects were detained, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) has said.
“On November 8 and 9, 2022, the Prosecutor General’s Office, together with law enforcement officers and international partners, conducted searches in call centers in Albania, Bulgaria, Georgia, North Macedonia and Ukraine, and arrested suspects,” the PGO said on its Telegram channel on Thursday.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the Prosecutor General’s Office, coordinated by Europol and Eurojust, takes part in measures to combat large-scale investment fraud involving hundreds of thousands of victims.
“The suspects belong to an international organized criminal group (OCG) involved in investment fraud using cryptocurrencies. Dozens of call centers in several countries and hundreds of online platforms have been created for this,” the PGO said.
According to the prosecutors, the suspects posed as brokers helping investors make big money with little investment.
“They deceived the victims, gained their trust on the Internet and created call centers. Later, the victims invested funds through web platforms controlled by the criminal organization and lost large amounts of money,” the prosecutor’s office said.
According to investigators, hundreds of thousands of investors around the world suffered from fraud, the damage is estimated at EUR 200 million per year.
According to the report, the cyber fraud investigation began in 2020, including in Ukraine.
“As part of the investigation, searches were conducted in call centers and in the places of residence of the defendants. Suspects who were staying in European countries were detained… a number of searches were made and illegal activities of call centers in Kyiv were revealed. Half a thousand laptops, electronic storage media, surveillance cameras, mobile phones and draft recordings have been seized,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said.
Oil prices began to decline on Thursday, falling for the fourth consecutive session on signals of expanding quarantine restrictions in China.
January futures for Brent on the London ICE Futures exchange by 14:01 Moscow time fell by $0.80 (0.86%) to $91.85 per barrel. Brent quotes fell below $92 per barrel for the first time since the end of October.
Quotes for December futures for WTI in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) by that time fell by $0.99 (1.15%) to $84.84 per barrel.
The day before, the price of Brent fell by 2.8%, WTI fell by 3.5%.
China introduces quarantine measures in a number of major cities, including Beijing, amid a jump in the incidence of COVID-19 in the country to the highest level in six months, Bloomberg reports. In particular, the restrictions affected the city of Chongqing with a population of more than 32 million people, which faced the sharpest increase in infections in more than a year.
China is the world’s largest importer of fuel, and market participants fear that lockdowns will put additional pressure on the economy and energy demand in the country, Barron’s notes.
In addition, on Wednesday it became known that US commercial oil inventories increased by 3.92 million barrels last week to 440.76 million barrels. This is a record figure since July 2021. Experts polled by Bloomberg expected an average increase in stocks of only 250 thousand barrels.
Traders are also waiting for the report on October inflation in the US, which will be released on Thursday and may affect the policy of the Federal Reserve. Analysts surveyed by Trading Economics expect a slowdown in inflation last month to 8% from September’s 8.2%.
The European stock indexes are mainly declining in trading on Thursday as investors are waiting for data on consumer price dynamics in the U.S. and continue to evaluate quarterly reports of companies.
By 10:53 a.m. the Stoxx Europe 600 composite index of the largest companies in the region had declined 0.24% to 419.34 points.
The British FTSE 100 stock index was down 0.19%, Germany’s DAX was down 0.09%, Spain’s IBEX 35 was down 0.49% while France’s CAC 40 was down 0.37%. Meanwhile, Italy’s FTSE MIB gained 0.15%.
The U.S. Labor Department will release inflation data at 3:30 p.m. ET on Thursday. Analysts on average forecast that the rate of consumer price growth slowed to 8% in October from 8.2% a month earlier.
The data could affect the policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed), which is aggressively raising interest rates in an attempt to curb inflation.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., congressional vote counting continues. The majority in the House of Representatives, most likely, will go to the Republicans, but in the Senate the balance of power is not clear yet, the final result could be known in a few weeks.
The leader of the fall among the components of the Stoxx 600 are the shares of the French outsourcing company Teleperformance SE, which went down by 26.75%.
Deutsche Telekom AG papers are cheapening by 2.3%, although the Europe’s largest telecoms company increased its net profit 1.8 times in the third quarter this year and improved its annual adjusted profit forecast for the third time since the beginning of the year.
Credit Agricole Group’s share price is down 4.5%. The French banking group recorded a slight decline in net profit and revenue in the third quarter of 2022 amid high volatility in financial markets.
Shares of German Knorr-Bremse AG, which specializes in production of braking systems for trucks and commercial vehicles, rose 10.1%. The company increased its revenue in the third quarter of this year and confirmed its full-year forecast.
Delivery Hero SE is up 10.7%. The German delivery service updated its full-year financial outlook.
Shares of RWE AG are up 2.1%. The German energy company doubled its net profit excluding one-time factors in the first nine months of 2022 thanks to the rapid development of its renewable energy operations.
International payment system Visa became a resident of the special legal and tax regime “Dia City”.
“Diya City” residency will allow the company to enjoy the best legal and tax conditions in Europe. It will also deepen cooperation with the Ukrainian IT sector and accelerate the development of the cashless economy of Ukraine,” wrote Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mikhail Fedorovv in his Telegram channel.
He noted that the company’s Ukrainian office has about 140 employees responsible for the development of payment technologies in 17 countries.
“The Kiev office of Visa is a sub-regional hub whose team is responsible for the support and development of business in 17 countries. Ukraine has always been and is our priority. As well as a reference point for many other markets, even from other subregions, given the technological, innovative and rapid dynamics of the banking sector, e-commerce, IT-industry, cashless payments and digital infrastructure in our country,” Denis Kazvan, head of corporate communications at Visa, commented on his Facebook page when Visa joined “Dia City”.
He noted that in times of war, digitalization and innovation only accelerate in fruitful work with banks, businesses, fintech and the government.
Representatives of the State Tax Service (STS), the Security Service and the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine completed a two-month search at the United Tobacco (United Tobacco LLC, Zheltye Vody, Dnipropetrovsk oblast), which resulted in the suspension of its “semi-legal” activities.
About the work stoppage of the enterprise, only during the full-scale Russian aggression did not pay to the state budget of Ukraine more than 5 billion UAH of excise tax, said the head of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax and customs policy Daniel Getmantsev.
“A huge semi-legal tobacco factory finally ceased to exist. Since 2015, the factory became a symbol of Ukrainian corruption, saturating the market with excise-free tobacco under the tacit consent of all law enforcement officers who were blind to the work of the superpowered enterprise. The SBU search of the factory lasted more than two months, during which the crooks tried to delay the actions of investigators and “cut” using their usual tools,” wrote the head of the Committee in his Telegram-channel.
According to Getmantsev, seven ultra-modern cigarette production lines were arrested and dismantled at the factory.
“Two more, which the thieves brought into Ukraine, but did not have time to install, will be found and seized in the near future,” he added.
As reported, earlier Getmantsev said that law enforcement officers have been searching the United Tobacco factory, which is suspected of illegal production of tobacco products, since September. Law enforcers have already identified suspects of the crime and assessed the scale of illegal activities.
United Tobacco has had previous conflicts with law enforcement agencies: in August 2021 officers of the State Fiscal Service (SFS, after last year’s reforms – Bureau of Economic Security) conducted a search at the factory on the case of illegal production of counterfeit cigarettes, but their work was blocked by a group of unidentified persons. The investigators’ entry to the factory was blocked by heavy machinery, a mass gathering of “sports people” and local residents.
In turn, United Tobacco accused the officers of the State Financial Service of exceeding their authority, blocking the work of the enterprise and causing injury to employees.
According to the State Tax Service, during January-August 2021 the officers seized almost 800 thousand packs of tobacco products worth about 13 million UAH, made under the United Tobacco brand without excise tax marks. Factory’s products were repeatedly seized during searches by tax police of warehouses and places of sale of counterfeit.
According to a tobacco market research institute “Kantar Ukraine”, the share of illicit tobacco products in the Ukrainian market in August 2022 increased by 5 percentage points (p.p.) compared with the annual average of 2021 – to 21.9% from 16.9%, the volume of the shadow market was the highest since the independence of Ukraine.
The Institute specified that 56% of the tobacco products illegally sold in 2022 as export or Duty Free products have the mark of production of Vinnikivska Tobacco Factory (Vinniki, Lviv region) and marked as not intended for sale in Ukraine. The share of unidentified producers was 24% (in 2021 – 23%), United Tobacco LLC (Zheltye Vody, Dnepropetrovsk oblast) – 19% (in 2021 – 15%).
Agricultural company Grain Alliance (Sweden) with assets in Ukraine has purchased and installed four diesel electric generators with a total capacity of 1.7 MW at Piryatynskyi elevator in Poltava region, which will enable the company to ensure continuous operation during prolonged power outages.
As reported on the company website on Wednesday, thanks to its own power generation the enterprise works productively despite the difficulties with electricity in Ukraine: as of the morning of November 7, the granary with the total capacity of 100 thousand tons has stored almost 20 thousand tons of corn, over 23 thousand tons of soybeans and 1.5 thousand tons of sunflower.
“We installed and connected all four generators promptly almost on the day of receipt, despite the weather or other technical conditions. The cumulative capacity produced by the new elevators is 1.7 MW. Thus, the division has ensured its energy independence in order to meet the set production objectives to the end,” Grain Alliance quotes Piryatynsky elevator director Oleksandr Gavrilenko as saying.
Silos with a total capacity of up to 100 tons of agricultural products are installed on Piryatynsky granary: six silos of 8 tons each produced by “Lubnymash”, 4 silos of 12 tons by “Option Agro Bud” and two silos of 5 tons by KMZ Industries.
In total, Grain Alliance has six granaries in Ukraine with a total capacity of over 260 thousand tons.
Before war, the agricultural holding farmed 57 thousand hectares in Kyiv, Poltava, Chernigov and Cherkassy regions, grew over 300 thousand tons of grains and oilseeds a year, and owned more than a thousand head of cattle.
The founders of Harvest Moon East LLC (Baryshevka village, Kyiv region) and BZK Grain Alliance (Sweden) created a joint company, Grain Alliance, in 2009.
