Tax schemes from the Cote d'Azur: who are Sergey Vyazmikin, Igor Kupranets and Igor Abramovich

In February 2023, employees of the State Bureau of Investigation exposed the head of the Kyiv Tax Service, Oksana Datii, in multimillion-dollar transactions. During the search, the woman was found with wish notes about $1 million, fur coats and travel. A year passed, and the matter gradually began to be forgotten.

Moreover, the woman even sued to have her reinstated, while simultaneously writing a book about etiquette and not even thinking about responsibility for schemes that involved tens of billions of hryvnia. The reason is that Datiya’s “curators” have a very strong influence on everything that happens now in the Tax Office. These are former police officers Sergei Vyazmikin and Igor Kupranets and their companion from the banned “Opposition Platform - For Life” Igor Abramovich.

The names of Vyazmikin and Abramovich are well known because of the Monaco Battalion investigation, because this couple was spotted in Saint-Jean-Cap Ferrat. Journalists found out that the former acting. the head of the economic protection department of the National Police and an ex-deputy from the Opposition for Life Protection live in a shared villa. Therefore, the SBI investigation even opened a case on the legality of border crossing of all members of the “Monaco battalion”. However, for a year no news was heard on this matter.

But there was talk about how Vyazmikin and Abramovich could afford a vacation in Monaco. Immediately after the arrest and searches of the elite lover from the Kyiv tax office, a meeting of the Temporary Investigative Commission on corruption in the State Tax Service was held in the Verkhovna Rada. It separately heard from journalist Yuri Butusov, who explained in the language of numbers which illegal schemes the tax authorities make the most money from. According to him, the basis is the blocking of tax invoices, which completely makes it impossible for enterprises to operate. They can only be unlocked through a bribe. Moreover, blocking occurs for almost half of all registered companies undergoing verification.

Another topic is swirling in the excise department, which has recently spread its wings like Atlas. It is in this context that Butusov names the names of Vyazmikin, Abramovich and the former head of the Economic Protection Department of the National Police of Ukraine Igor Kuprants.

The latter became disgraced during the time of the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs by Arsen Avakov. He was credited with illegal enrichment, involvement in companies that won port security contracts, and constant milking of the business. The Department of Economic Protection in the Police is something like the scandalous “Department K” in the SBU. In fact, both of these institutions must fight corruption and protect business, but in fact one can only remember how SBU officer Demchina registered his apartments, cars and fortune, earned through “working with business,” to his common-law wife.

Kupranets has worked in the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs since the late 90s and is considered “the ideological founder of the Department of Economic Protection,” as the Wikipedia page pathetically reports about him. However, having worked in the ministry until 2019, he is remembered only for undeclared cars, a donated apartment and his wife’s illegal business in the Chernobyl zone.

According to media reports, during his time at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Kupranets managed to become close to Sergei Vyazmikin, whose boss he was. In the “Department of Business Nightmare,” as it is jokingly called, they have managed to develop a good base of enterprises from which they continue to “feed.” At the same time, since 2019, another member has joined their group - already a former deputy from the pro-Russian OPZZH Igor Abramovich. He was a member of the Tax Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, where he was kindly invited by the chairman of this committee and personal friend Daniil Getmantsev.

Around this time, the trio switched to working with excise goods. According to analysts and parliamentary representatives, the gray market for tobacco products reached its peak last year and began to account for more than 20%. There is nothing to say about what happens with illegal alcohol. If Igor Abramovich is more associated with cigarettes, then Sergei Vyazmikin is associated with alcohol because of his father-in-law Alexander Sitak.

Vyazmikin’s wife Oksana comes from a wealthy family of farmers in the Zhitomir region. She heads the First Ukrainian Agrarian Company LLC, which owns the Mercedes in which the former policeman drives around Monaco. But her father runs the Berdichev Malt Company, which is a large malt producer.

Needless to say, the agricultural companies of the Sitak-Vyazmikin family never have problems with the Tax Service, while other businessmen-agrarians do not have such privileges. And this despite the fact that the family comes from the Russian Federation, and Vyazmikin’s wife could have had a passport with a double-headed eagle until 2016. At least, her Russian citizenship is mentioned in the court decision, which concerned violations of traffic rules.

In order not to fall out of the tax topic after the scandalous dismissal of Oksana Datii mentioned at the beginning, Vyazmikin, Abramovich and Kuprants have other people in the system. In particular, judging by the declaration filed in January 2024, Sergei Vyazmikin’s mother, Tatyana Nikiforovna, works as deputy head of the State Tax Service department of the Goloseevsky district of Kiev. Before that, she held the position of Chief State Inspector of the State Tax Service of Kyiv.

Abramovich also has his own proven staff at the Kyiv Tax Office. This is the deputy of the dismissed Datiya - Inna Yakushko. The woman has been working in the structures of the State Tax Service for a long time, and even managed to work for the wallet of the head of the Ministry of Revenue and Duties, which during the time of Yanukovych was headed by the notorious Alexander Klimenko. It was not possible to trace the documentary connection between Abramovich and Yakushko, but this information is actively discussed in Telegram channels involved in tax topics.

Former people's deputy Igor Mosiychuk wrote last year that Vyazmikin, Kupranets and Abramovich are behind the tax schemes. And they are allegedly covered by the head of the Tax Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Daniil Getmantsev. After Abramovich drew up the mandate of a deputy of the Ukrainian parliament, Getmantsev even thanked him for his work, despite his affiliation with the banned “Opposition Platform - For Life.”

Getmantsev shows a certain tendency with friendship with enemies. The fact is that for three convocations in a row he was an assistant to the “regional” Vladimir Sivkovich, now suspected of high treason. Sivkovich is accused not only of personal supervision during the dispersal of the Revolution of Dignity rally, but also of active cooperation with the Russian FSB since the 90s. The Ukrainian investigation documented a meeting between Sivkovich and the Secretary of the Russian National Security and Defense Council Nikolai Patrushev in October 2013 to coordinate actions to suppress possible rallies in support of the European integration of Ukraine. It’s hard to even imagine what the current “Servant of the People” Daniil Getmantsev could advise such a subject.

The names of Vyazmikin, Kuprants and Abramovich are also mentioned in the context of possible schemes for excise goods by another member of the Tax Committee, deputy from the Servant of the People Maryan Zablotsky. In particular, back in December 2022, he said: “In my opinion, there are factories to whose work the Tax Service pays insufficient attention. I have repeatedly heard the names Kupranets and Vyazmikin, which were mentioned in the report about the “Monaco Battalion”... I cannot provide any evidence, but I can say that at the tax committee some deputies asked the chairman of the committee about this.”

All these active discussions among senior officials, rumors in Telegram channels, the insane state of former police officers Vyazmikin and Kuprants and their comrade from the pro-Russian party Abramovich cannot but have a basis. Everyone seems to know something, but somehow they talk with great caution about gray schemes in the Tax Office. And the more law enforcement officials put the brakes on the case of Oksana Datii, who likes to write letters of desire, and especially the investigation into the “Monaco Battalion,” the more these discussions will begin to be taken lightly. And the worst thing about this situation is that it will continue to enrich people who may have ties to the aggressor country.