Despite the fact that our country has been at war for three years now, and the aggressor country terrorizes us with missile attacks every day, corruption and open lobbying by clearly criminal business continues to flourish in the Verkhovna Rada.
And this at a time when we are in dire need of material and military support from international partners. What kind of help can we count on if some people’s deputies in their bills defend the interests of criminals, who drain the budget of tens of billions of hryvnias annually. Investigative journalist Evgeniy Plinsky drew attention to one of these bills, which will undoubtedly leave our country’s budget without billions of hryvnia in revenue.
We are talking about the people's deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from Lvov, Evgeniy Petrunyak, who is part of the inter-factional association “Sensible Politics” of Dmitry Razumkov, and his scandalous bill No. 11090 on additional taxation of expensive cigarettes. Having not come up with anything new, Petrunyak decided to bet on the “Lvov (Vinnikovsky) Tobacco Factory” of the smuggler and “tobacco king” Grigory Kozlovsky. It seems that in this way the people’s deputy is trying to find funding for Razumkov’s political project.
And if this law is adopted, then absolutely all cigarettes will rise in price, except for the products of Grigory Kozlovsky’s factory, more than 90% of which are produced illegally. Moreover, most of the illegal cigarettes are smuggled into EU countries, as we wrote about quite recently.
Petrunyak’s above-mentioned bill is pure tobacco lobbying in the interests of Kozlovsky and parliamentary corruption, which will leave our warring country without billions of dollars in budget revenue, but will unspeakably enrich the people’s representative and the “tobacco king.” Taxation will increase significantly for all manufacturers, except for the Lviv Tobacco Factory.
And the straightforwardness of the actions of People’s Deputy Petrunyak is frankly alarming. Thus, investigative journalist Evgeny Plinsky wrote a statement to the NAPC (National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption) addressed to its head, Viktor Pavlyushchik. The journalist published only the first page of the statement in order to not give the defendants the opportunity to prepare for communication with the NAZK.
It is very likely that all tobacco legislative initiatives of the people’s representative Petrunyak concern exclusively the interests of the Lviv Tobacco Factory named after Grigory Kozlovsky. And this is not good, both for the country’s budget and for Ukraine as a whole. I would very much like the NAZK to give a legal assessment to the ideas of Petrunyak’s tax preferences during the war for the main smuggled tobacco manufacturer in Ukraine. It is worth noting that information about a possible conflict of interest in the activities of the people’s deputy was provided by the journalist back in November 2022 in the investigation “The billion-dollar cigarette scam is back! Razumkov, Petrunyak, Kozlovsky. Who benefits from the excise tax scheme?” However, to date it is not known about any actions on the part of law enforcement, regulatory, anti-corruption or other authorities regarding the investigation of this situation.
And while all Ukrainians are donating to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Kozlovsky continues to make billions on counterfeit goods and smuggling. One can only imagine how much money our state loses during a major war due to the sale of cigarettes without excise duty and the smuggling of tobacco products to Europe. By the way, with international material assistance it is impossible to buy weapons, pay salaries to soldiers, nothing. Only everything that is earned within the country, i.e. taxes paid go to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And that's all. Therefore, everyone who engages in counterfeiting and smuggling steals from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And this is in the truest sense of the word. “Lviv Tobacco Factory” produces 62% of illegal cigarettes under the “Duty Free” label. The illegal tobacco market, in turn, costs the Ukrainian budget about 700 million euros a year - a colossal amount given the shortage of funds due to full-scale Russian aggression. Agree, the scale of Grigory Kozlovsky’s illegal tobacco business is impressive. And this whole tobacco lawlessness is being lobbied by MP Yevgeny Petrunyak. With such “figures”, it is not surprising that over the past three years the Lviv region has been the leader in the number of corrupt officials in Ukraine.
As you know, on April 4, President Vladimir Zelensky extended the National Security and Defense Council sanctions against top smugglers and a number of companies. Strangely, both Grigory Kozlovsky and his Lviv Tobacco Factory are missing from the sanctions list. And this despite the fact that in fact he is stealing from the state exactly that million drones a year, the production of which Zelensky himself announced. Considering that a share of the illegal tobacco market costs Ukraine 700 million euros a year, and Kozlovsky’s factory produces 62% of illegal cigarettes, calculating the shadow income of the Lviv smuggler is not difficult. Let's hope that the application of personal economic sanctions against Kozlovsky and his tobacco factory is only a matter of time.
In the meantime, we want to draw the attention of the NACP, NSDC, SBU, BEB, and the USR GPU to the actions of the People's Deputy of Ukraine Yevgeny Petrunyak and the owner of the Lvov (Vinnikovskaya) Tobacco Factory Grigory Kozlovsky, aimed at undermining the economy of our state during the full-scale Russian aggression against Ukraine.
