Customs does not notice spare parts, iPhones and Italian minivans

There are important questions: has smuggling from Turkey stopped passing through Chernivtsi? No. Has the flow of “Italian minibuses” through Transcarpathia stopped? No. Has someone stopped transporting cars, spare parts and iPhones through Volyn customs? Not either.

These are the questions asked by Ukrainian journalist Evgeniy Plinsky

According to Plinsky, economist Alexei Kushch mathematically explained that the budget never saw the 300 billion UAH promised from the fight against smuggling. Even an additional 100 billion did not come, which means that a personalized fight against a systemic problem also turned out to be an ineffective tool.

Today it can be clearly stated that the result of the sanctions was only a redistribution of influence at customs, a change in smuggling groups and clans, a strengthening of the role of security forces and updated rules of the game for those smugglers who slipped through the sanctions lists. All.

Even Vadim Alperin, whom Zelensky personally called the “Godfather of Smuggling” and who is further under sanctions from the National Security and Defense Council, several NABU cases and deprived of citizenship, according to my sources, during the war was involved in organizing the export of circuit grain through the ports of Odessa. How this is possible - I don’t know.

Of course, as I said at the very beginning, President Zelensky’s position on the issue of smuggling has remained unchanged since 2019, namely its complete eradication. And this is confirmed by his personal actions in 2019, the non-standard steps of the National Security and Defense Council in 2021, the signed law on the criminalization of smuggling in 2023 and support for the concept of rebooting customs in 2024.

But as we see, despite all this, over the past five years it has not been possible to qualitatively change the work of customs and reduce the flow of smuggling. It didn’t work out, because a lot depends not only on the wishes of the President, but on the specific actions of his team.

What to do with all this? There is no single answer

But it should be available to those who are today taking on the next customs reform, declaring that holding a transparent competition for the head of the State Customs Service under the control of international affairs and depriving the Ministry of Finance of personnel influence will solve all problems. I want to be wrong, but given all the problems and points described, it won’t work.

The external influence of security forces, the lack of institutional independence, the integration of smuggling clans and the desire of specific people from the government quarter to make money at customs are the main challenges, which, unfortunately, cannot be addressed in the bill. This is already somewhere at the level of self-awareness of the authorities. She either gives up all this or she doesn't.