Detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) are investigating the fact of tax evasion of more than UAH 1 billion by a well-known organizer of online gambling, the bureau said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The investigation has established that the company paid out UAH 4.5 billion in winnings to players, of which it failed to pay personal income tax and military duty totaling UAH 1.1 billion. These payments were recorded not as winnings, but as refunds, i.e. deposits, to individuals that were allegedly not used in gambling,” law enforcement officials say.
The BES does not disclose the name of the gambling organizer, but according to Interfax-Ukraine, it is the Cosmolot online casino, whose co-owner Arnulf Damerau recently told the Financial Times that allegedly corrupt officials in Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies and the presidential administration are trying to extort tens of millions of euros from him.
The BES adds that more than 5 million banking transactions are being analyzed, and the amount of damage caused to the state is confirmed, among other things, by the materials of the documentary audit of the State Tax Service.
“To ensure a comprehensive and complete investigation, detectives have already questioned the company’s employees, players and counterparties, conducted searches, sent numerous requests to banking and other institutions, and received a number of rulings on temporary access to things and documents,” the statement said.
According to the statement, as part of the criminal proceedings, the bank accounts of the company, which is still operating today, were seized, but the court ruling allowed it to make all necessary payments to the budget and pay wages.
“At the same time, at the time of the announcement of one of the rulings, the company’s officials transferred 100 million to the accounts of a counterparty, and these funds were subsequently arrested,” the release said.
The BES also states that the company’s officials have been obstructing the detectives in every possible way during the investigation, in particular, they have ignored the investigating judge’s decision to grant temporary access to documents, refused to provide information during interrogations, and concealed primary business documents.
“The pre-trial investigation is currently ongoing. The BES detectives continue to collect evidence that will be used both for forensic economic examination to confirm the amount of damage caused to the budget of Ukraine and to prove illegal activities,” the law enforcement officers said in a statement.
The amount of income tax and dividends for 2023 that state-owned PrivatBank (Kyiv) transferred to the state budget amounted to almost UAH 50 billion, Yulia Metzger, a member of the bank’s Supervisory Board, said at the International Financial Club BANKIR conference.
“Already in February this year, the Supervisory Board decided that the bank had transferred to the budget an advance payment of dividends and income tax based on the results of the previous year in the amount of almost UAH 50 billion,” she said.
According to the NBU, PrivatBank’s pre-tax profit for 2023 amounted to UAH 72.77 billion, and income tax expenses amounted to UAH 35 billion. According to the government’s decision, 80% (UAH 30.2 billion) of the remaining net profit of UAH 37.76 billion should be used to pay dividends.
As reported, on February 12, Privat transferred the amount of income tax and the first tranche of dividends for 2023 in the amount of UAH 26 billion to the state budget in advance.
PrivatBank is the largest bank in the country, with total assets of UAH 848.64 billion as of March 1, 2024, or 25.9% of the assets of all 63 banks.
Metinvest Mining and Metallurgical Group, including its associates and joint ventures, increased its payments of taxes and duties to the budgets of all levels in Ukraine by 1.7 times year-on-year to UAH 4.2 billion in January-March this year.
According to the company’s press release on Monday, the largest deductions include subsoil use fees, which increased 7.5 times year-on-year to UAH 1.3 billion compared to Q1 2023. The Group also increased its personal income tax payments by 22% to UAH 791 million. In addition, Metinvest transferred UAH 870 million of unified social tax to the budget, which is 20% higher than in Q1 2023.
At the same time, Metinvest’s Ukrainian enterprises paid UAH 407 million in income tax in January-March 2024. Land payments increased by 8% year-on-year to UAH 312 million, and environmental tax by 34% to UAH 182 million.
Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest, noted that despite the war in Ukraine and many unfavorable business factors, the Group managed to achieve positive dynamics in payments.
“This is the result of our team’s efforts to improve efficiency in all areas and to adjust the company to the new environment. As the largest taxpayer in the industry, we realize that the economy of the frontline regions and the entire country, as well as the ability to support the army and Ukrainians, depend on our stable operation. And we will do everything to continue to overcome all the challenges of wartime on the way to victory,” the top manager emphasized.
As reported, in 2023, Metinvest paid UAH 14.6 billion in taxes to the Ukrainian budget.
“Metinvest is a vertically integrated group of steel and mining companies. The Group’s enterprises are mainly located in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovs’k regions.
The main shareholders of the holding are SCM Group (71.24%) and Smart Holding (23.76%), which jointly manage it.
Metinvest Holding LLC is the management company of Metinvest Group.
In 2023, the largest alcohol producers increased their income tax payments by 1.7 times compared to 2022, and their income tax efficiency increased from 1.4% in 2022 to 2.0% in 2023, said Danylo Hetmantsev, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy.
“Measures to de-shadow the alcoholic beverage market, despite the fierce resistance of black market areas (the so-called ‘business defenders’ and ‘sofa experts’), are yielding positive results in the form of budget revenues,” he wrote on Telegram.
The committee chairman named National Vodka Company LLC (Bayadera Group), LVN Limited LLC (TM Nemiroff), Lviv Distillery, and Shustov-Spirt ALC as the leaders in terms of tax efficiency.
According to him, Global Spirit Group has significantly improved its VAT tax efficiency from 3.5% in 2022 to 6.1% in 2023 and 9.4% in 2 months of 2024.
According to Mr. Hetmantsev, the largest alcohol producers have improved their performance not only in terms of income tax, but also in terms of VAT. For two months of this year, VAT payable has already been declared by 28.1% more than in the same period last year.
At the same time, the VAT tax efficiency increased to 6.2% in two months of 2024 from 4.9% in two months of 2023. At the same time, this figure increased by 5.2% compared to 2023.
Agroholding “Agrotrade” in 2023 paid 150 million UAH of taxes and fees, of which 86 million UAH went to local budgets, reported the press service of the agroholding in Facebook.
“So far we can’t cultivate all our areas, as some of them are too close to the border and places of active hostilities – these lands suffer from constant shelling and bombing. Despite this, Agrotrade Group continues to fulfill its financial obligations to the state in a timely manner”, – said the general director of the agroholding Elena Vorona.
According to the report, the largest receipts in 2023 from the agroholding received the communities of Sumy region – 32.46 million UAH, budgets of Chernihiv and Kharkiv regions – 25.44 million UAH and 16.24 million UAH respectively, Poltava region – 11.79 million UAH. “Agrotrade” also paid more than UAH 20 mln of unified social contribution.
Realizing the importance of taxes for financing the urgent needs of Ukrainians, “Agrotrade” plans to increase deductions to the state and local budgets, summarized in the agricultural holding.
Group of companies “Agrotrade” – vertically integrated holding of the full agro-industrial cycle (production, processing, storage and trade of agricultural products). It cultivates more than 70 thousand hectares of land in Chernihiv, Sumy, Poltava and Kharkiv regions. Profile crops – sunflower, corn, winter wheat, soybean and rape. It has its own network of elevators with the capacity of one-time storage of 570 thousand tons.
The Group also produces corn and sunflower seed hybrids, barley and winter wheat. In 2014, a seed plant with a capacity of 20 thousand tons of seeds per year was built on the basis of the seed farm “Kolos” (Kharkiv region). In 2018, Agrotrade brought its own brand Agroseeds to the market.
Vsevolod Kozhemyako is the founder and CEO of Agrotrade.
Dnipro Metallurgical Plant (DMZ, formerly Dniprokoks), a part of DCH Steel of businessman Aleksandr Yaroslavsky’s DCH group, paid over UAH 657 million in taxes in 2023, up 64% compared to 2022.
According to the company, value added tax accounted for UAH 277.5 million in the structure of payments to budgets of all levels. Income tax amounted to UAH 122 million, and unified social tax, rent and other contributions amounted to UAH 257 million.
It is noted that this result of significant support for the state budget was noted by Danylo Hetmantsev, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Taxation and Customs Policy. He sent a letter of gratitude to the company, in which he noted the hard work of the plant’s team and emphasized that DMZ is one of the industry leaders in terms of tax payments.
“I am grateful to every employee of Dneprovsky Iron and Steel Works for their contribution to the defense capability of our country, its endurance and strength. We continue to work on the economic front to maintain the financial stability of the state,” said Vitaly Bash, CEO of DCH Steel.
In 2023, the plant increased its rolled steel output by 86.2% compared to 2022, up to 105.6 thousand tons, and coke output by 38.5%, up to 292.7 thousand tons.
DMZ specializes in the production of steel, pig iron, rolled products and products made from them. On March 1, 2018, DCH Group signed an agreement to buy Dnipro Metallurgical Plant from Evraz.
