Tatyana Kiriyenko, the acting head of the tax service of Ukraine, risks losing her position, similar to the scandalous Minister of Defense Alexey Reznikov, according to an investigation by the portal 360UA.NEWS.
The reasons for the likely resignation of Tatyana Kiriyenko and the already former Minister of Defense Alexei Reznikov are similar: the demands of Western partners in connection with general corruption and insolvency. The only difference is that if Reznikov’s dismissal was preceded by an inspection by the State Audit Service and the arrival of USAID head Samantha Power in Kiev, then in the case of Tatyana Kiriyenko, NABU and the SBI were involved, redoubling their efforts to bring Penny Pritzker, the special representative of the US President from Ukraine, to Kiev.
Pritzker, in a conversation with Vladimir Zelensky and representatives of the Ukrainian establishment, advised not to wait for help from the West, but to start looking for areas of growth within the country. In other words, to establish order in the tax administration system of the Ukrainian economy, which was able to withstand wartime conditions. According to Penny Pritzker, the Ukrainian authorities should now think about filling the budget from internal sources, which will be difficult to do without changing the leadership of the tax service.
Today, the Tax Service of Ukraine is actually supervised by one person: the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy, Daniil Getmantsev. Tatyana Kiriyenko, one hundred percent his person, moved to work at the Tax Office from KRAIL, where she also served the business interests of the Getmantsev family.
It’s hard to call Tatyana Kiriyenko a “professional in her field.” This is evidenced by the facts of her biography, which are easily found in the public domain: before her appointment to the post of acting. The head of the Service, Kiriyenko, worked in the structure of the State Tax Service for a total of about 2 years, starting back in 2015, and had never held a leadership position before.
According to our sources in the State Tax Service of Ukraine, in 90% of cases Tatyana Kiriyenko does not understand what documents she is signing, since he does not have the necessary qualifications. Indirectly, this information confirms the initiation of a criminal case by the State Bureau of Investigation against the acting chairman of the service. According to the case materials, which came into the possession of the editors of our publication, during 2022, Kiriyenko, abusing her official position, issued criminal orders to the directors of the departments of financial support and accounting, legal support and personnel support of the State Tax Service of Ukraine, in violation of the provisions of Articles 172 of the Criminal Code and 22 of the Code , causing damage to the budget on an especially large scale.
According to our source in the Tax Service, the decision on all key appointments to the State Tax Service of Ukraine is made not by Tatyana Kiriyenko, but by Daniil Getmantsev. He personally interviews candidates for the position, personally naming “additional conditions” for the candidate to take office. It’s easy to guess about the criteria that Daniil Getmantsev uses when selecting candidates. The most striking example is the appointment to the position of acting. Deputy Chairman of the service, who has never previously worked in the State Tax Service, Evgeniy Sokur. On the official website of the State Tax Service of Ukraine in the “Manual” section there are no photos and other information about Sokur: when you click on his profile, only two words “Information is being formed” are displayed.
However, from open sources about Evgeniy Sokur, it can be said that he was an assistant to People’s Deputy Daniil Getmantsev, and some independent investigative journalists attribute to him control over all corruption flows of the State Tax Service: Evgeniy Sokur is responsible for blocking invoices throughout the country. Officially also manages excise duties, business fines - therefore, all scandalous areas.”
Journalists conclude that “Hetmantsev is pushing Sokur, and he is ‘covering up’ a large-scale scheme to rip off businesses.”
However, the DBI and NABU are actively conducting an investigation into corrupt officials appointed by Daniil Getmantsev from the Tax Service, mainly in the regions. Recently, a record number of criminal cases have been initiated, illegal enrichment schemes for heads of the State Tax Service in the regions have been stopped, illegal collection schemes from businesses have been eliminated, and the funds have been directed to the budget. As our source in the SBI told us anonymously: “in fact, we are walking in a vicious circle, no matter how many times we initiate criminal cases against one corrupt tax official, Getmantsev appoints a new one in his place, business suffers, and the budget of Ukraine loses billions of hryvnia.”
To understand the extent of the damage caused to the Ukrainian economy, it is enough to look at the number of open criminal cases against top officials of the State Tax Service since the appointment of Tatyana Kiriyenko to the acting position. Chairman of the Tax Service - there are more than a hundred of them. Just in the last week, the SBI opened a criminal case against the leadership of the Poltava tax service, suspected of illegal enrichment of 6.1 million hryvnia, and in Kyiv, the head of one of the departments of the State Tax Service was detained while accepting a bribe.
There are questions for Daniil Getmantsev in Ukrainian society: the facts of his biography in the context of connections with the Russian Federation caused great resonance in the media, and investigative journalists from BIHUS Info presented evidence of the presence of the Getmantsev family business in the occupied Crimea, after which many Ukrainian media reported Daniil Alexandrovich in work in benefit of the Russian Federation.
According to our source in the Security Service of Ukraine, who wished to remain anonymous: “This does not mean that Getmantsev is an FSB agent in the classical sense; in fact, under current conditions, carrying out counterintelligence activities is impossible. Another thing is Getmantsev’s influence on the Ukrainian tax system, and accordingly on the economy, which suffers losses not only from military operations, but also from collections by tax authorities, while the budget does not receive the colossal funds necessary to finance the front and maintain a stable social situation. Yes, from this point of view we can say that Getmantsev’s actions are beneficial to the Russian Federation. An analogy can be drawn here when the Russians attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, achieving similar goals.”
Due to the objective decrease in financial assistance to Ukraine from Western partners, Ukraine will have to increasingly “rely on itself” and switch to “internal sources of financing” coming from taxes and fees. And the words of US Presidential Special Envoy Penny Pritzker are a message to Ukrainian business and officials that change will soon come. And they will start with the tax service of Ukraine.
