While Ukrainians are collecting hryvnias for turnstiles, pickup trucks and drones, outstanding fighters of the Monaco battalion under the leadership of Daniil Getmantsev are robbing the state budget and skimming money from legal businesses. This is how it works with the production of alcohol and spirits.
To describe the situation very briefly, it looks as if Daniil Getmantsev has formed a scheme in which the economy is destroyed through audits and vile changes in tax laws. And he does this not only to damage the Ukrainian economy, but as a result, also the country’s defense capability. The second reason for these innovations of his is to create conditions for business under which business managers will simply be happy to pay off with bribes from far-fetched checks and groundless attacks from tax officials.
That is, the situation looks like Getmantsev is simultaneously pursuing two goals. The first is to help the Kremlin bring down the Ukrainian state. The second is to raise a mountain of illegal corruption money. Whether he helps the Kremlin on his own initiative or on instructions from outside - let the Service of God, that is, the SBU, sort it out. But about the second motive, about collecting corruption money - domestic investigative journalists have already dug up and made public a lot about this.
Getmantsev is a real genius in creating illegal corruption schemes. But such schemes are always based on a very simple principle: artificial problems are created for business and taxpayers, for this reason businesses are forced to pay bribes so that they can simply work honestly. At the same time, shady businessmen create individual pressure on specific enterprises and entrepreneurs if they try to resist the arbitrariness of corruption.
What does the Monaco battalion have to do with it? Yes, despite the fact that Getmantsev, in his monstrous actions, relies on those who fled from Ukraine to Monaco, but uses his extensive connections in the tax and customs authorities. Here are two bright personalities from this battalion "Monaco" - people's deputy from the banned pro-Russian party OPZZH Igor Abramovich and former acting. Head of the Department of Economic Protection of the National Police Sergei Vyazmikin. Both fled from Ukraine, both appeared in the UP report, in which they appear while jogging in Nice, on the Cote d'Azur in France.
It is these two characters that the media consider to be the perpetrators of a scheme to squeeze money out of producers of alcohol and other excisable goods. In particular, according to these data, Igor Abramovich and the former deputy head of the NPU under the Minister of Internal Affairs Avakov, Igor Kupranets, created a kind of corruption octopus. Vyazmikin’s role is, together with Kupranets, to provide communication with corrupt colleagues in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and guarantee appropriate forceful cover for corrupt actions.
But who should come to enterprises for money? This is where the acting ones come into play. Chairman of the State Tax Service of Ukraine Tatyana Kiriyenko and acting Deputy Chairman of the State Tax Service Evgeniy Sokur, who are under the close influence of Getmantsev. Specifically Sokur, Getmantsev raised him almost from the cradle as a patented corrupt official, acting. The deputy head of the tax office has worked in Getmantsev’s structures for many years and has hardly eaten out of his hands.
How does this happen in real life? The reason for inspection, and therefore for further collections from enterprises, is created by the department for control over excisable goods. Clever inspectors, on instructions from above, attribute violations to this or that manufacturer that in fact do not exist at all. If such an enterprise does not agree to pay the ransom in cash, inspectors stop production and begin to harass its partners - buyers and suppliers.
And this “replenishment” is organized not as a series of isolated episodes, but as a real conveyor belt - they don’t have time to pack the cash in suitcases and transfer it upwards. Do they have time?
In theory, creative corrupt officials should be in prison for such antics and for such harm to the economy? But no.
Suffice it to recall the activities of Alexander Yarmolenko, who until recently, at the instigation of the above-mentioned persons, held the position of head of the department for control of excisable goods, as well as his henchman, oh, excuse me, deputy, Ivan Levkin. By the way, among alcohol producers, Levkin is still called the “gray eminence” of shadow schemes. When, finally, the chairs began to shake under these entertainers, they rushed to save them. Yarmolenko actually managed to escape to Monaco (the corrupt officials there are anointed with honey, or something). And Levkin was temporarily moved to the relatively unprepossessing position of head of the tax audit department of the State Tax Service in the Lviv region. But Levkin did not let go of the steering wheel and continues to “resolve issues.”
Sometimes it comes to the point of absurdity: the director of the Department for Control of Excise Goods, Eleonora Skoda (another “pound” of Getmantsev), without hesitation, right in front of her subordinates, calls Yarmolenko in Monaco to get the go-ahead to make serious decisions. And Levkin, despite his modest position, directly gives instructions to the regions who and how much to “finish.”
The cost of the issue is crazy: the monthly volume of bribes to tax officials and security forces in the alcohol industry alone is estimated at $4 million. According to available media estimates, about one and a half dozen distilleries were driven into corruption networks and regularly “finished”: Storonibabsky, Strutinsky, Ravarusky, Guralna Branitskikh, Zirnensky, Buchatsky, Mishkovitsky, Luzhansky, Nitrobos, Bershadsky, Karavansky, Lipnitsky. Distilleries are also forced to pay in many cases.
Of course, without the “black cash collectors” this entire system could not work sustainably. According to media reports, trusted persons are authorized to handle shady extortions, in particular in the Lviv region. They say that control over these persons is tight, because cash! Therefore, they are shepherded tirelessly by Igor Krivetsky, well known outside the region, better known as a crime boss nicknamed “Pups”. There is even a certain division of labor - one is assigned to the collection from “vodka” and “alcohol producers”, and the second is engaged in “tobacco”. All this, of course, would have been impossible without a strong Kyiv roof. According to the UP, it was in the car of a trusted person that the Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine was traveling across the border on vacation to Spain. Also, high-ranking Kyiv security officials and officials regularly stay at the caregiver’s luxury hotel for free. It’s hard to call this a coincidence, but rather corruption.
It is in this way that the scheme for “financializing” excise industries, created by the corrupt strategist Getmantsev, generates billions of hryvnias of “black” cash every month. But the flow of corruption funds thus formed not only flows into the pockets of Getmantsev’s team, but also fills a kind of “bedside table” from which envelopes with cash are distributed to security forces, politicians and deputies. You asked what kind of corruption is there? Well, this is it, according to Getmantsev’s plan - powerful, systemic and well protected from society, which is now fighting at the front and in the rear for the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
