A Little Space Elephant of Poroshenko

Poroshenko forgot to include Salvador Dalí’s sculpture in his declaration. The assessed value of the piece is around 100 mln (!) UAH.

So now I’m presenting this story as a gift to Mr Sytnyk, Head of NABU, who has already felt uneasy because of his own stupidity. I mean his disclosing the secret investigative search documents on the special prosecutor named Kulyk.

Instead of raising hollow suspicions of ‘illicit enrichment’ against deputies who are hollow just like these suspicions, reading this information the Head of NABU gets an opportunity to threaten the President himself.

To have it accomplished it’s not necessary to arrange meetings with journalist Sedletska 50 times per year. All that is required to do is to attentively read this material and indict the President (so far the President) for tax evasion on a particularly large scale.

With a three-years ban on the right to hold public office.

Well, regardless of the paranoid greed and slovenly appearance Peter Poroshenko is a real connoisseur of arts. According to his declaration he owns a huge collection of paintings (84 pieces) and 7 sculptures including Vincenzo Gevito’s sculpture ‘A Young Fisherman’.

In the distant year of 2012 after Viktor Yanukovich (being not a runaway President at that moment), appointed Poroshenko as a Minister of Economic Development and Trade, Peter made a gift to congratulate himself. He bought a statuette by Salvador Dali, a Spanish painter, graphic artist, sculptor and film director. The statuette bore a name Éléphant Dalinien ou éléphant spatial, 1980 (A Space Elephant).

There are only 8 Space Elephants in the world that were created by the sculptor in 1980. Lately one of the elephants (No. 4) was put up for a temporary auction in Canada. The assessed value of the sculpture was 3.6 mln USD that is 100 mln UAH.

Poroshenko managed to pay for the sculpture much less. As it’s written in Sotheby`s auction extract that I have, Poroshenko purchased the Space Elephant on May 3, 2012. The sculpture’s lot number was 325 and it was sold for 338.5k USD.

Sotheby’s invoice had the name of Poroshenko written on it dd 04/05/2012 and the delivery address was 9 Grushevskogo Street, Kyiv, 01008 that is Poroshenko’s personal apartment near the Verkhovna Rada.

The deal was managed by Alena Latchininsky (A representative from Sotheby’s), Senior Sales Manager at Sotheby’s. On May 8, 2012 Alena Latchininsky sent a letter to Peter Poroshenko thanking him for the purchase and enclosed the payment invoice dd 04/05/2012. The manager stated that she would wait for the payment confirmation within 10 business days and would contact him to discuss the shipment of his new property. She also notified that the company preserved the right to charge a storage fee from him in case the property remained with them for more after 30 days.

I’m asking you to pay attention to the fact that the payment could be accepted only from the buyer named on the invoice as it was written in the letter. In that case it was Peter Poroshenko. It means that to pay for the purchase the Minister of Economic Development had either an individual exchange permit from the National Bank or he performed the payment from his offshore account that remained unknown to anyone. And it would be nice of NABU to find everything about it out.

I’m going to remind you that in April, 2011 there was a law ‘About Corruption Prevention and Combating’ enacted. According to its Article 12 all government employees had to file a yearly declaration concerning their property, income, expanses and financial obligations for the previous year. It all had to be done till April 1 of every year.

Thereby the expenses for buying the Space Elephant had to be displayed by Poroshenko in his declaration for 2012. At that time the declarations were not available in the public domain. But due to the declaration register we can track income and expenses of the officials today.

The Space Elephant does not exist in Poroshenko’s declaration for 2015. But it’s not that difficult to track it down. Such pieces of cultural value had to be registered by Peter Poroshenko at border crossing and an export certificate had to be submitted by Poroshenko to the revenue and duties agency for further transportation of the piece (Article 21 of the Law of Ukraine dd 21/09/99 No.1068-XIV).

Moreover, having the customs declaration for Poroshenko’s Space Elephant completed (product item 9703) Poroshenko had to pay tax and duty fees in accordance with the article 206 of the Tax Code of Ukraine AT CUSTOMS REGISTRATION IN 2012 according to the Tax Code of Ukraine: the subparagraph 194.1 of the article 194 and the subparagraph ‘a’ of the paragraph 193.1 of the article 193 at the tax rate of 20%. The total amount would be 2.7 mln UAH

If Poroshenko didn’t have the customs declaration completed or imported the statuette at the underestimated value he can be now obliged to pay 9.5 mln UAH due to current exchange rate.

Acc. to the Tax Code of Ukraine: subparagraph 54.3.1 of the article 54 in case a tax payer does not submit a tax (customs) declaration within the specified time-frame fiscal authority must impose a tax penalty in the amount of 25% of the sum to be charged and/or its further payment to the budget.

I applied to the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine and the Presidential Administration of Poroshenko with a request to comment on the purchase of the sculpture ‘The Space Elephant’, sources of income for the purchase, payment method and taxes-and-duties amount paid at border crossing.

I’ve got no reply from the Presidential Administration till now. Though, I believe this information will urge Poroshenko’s officials to provide it for the President not to look like a ‘profiteer’ saving money on taxes charged for the expansive purchase again.

I’d like to remind Peter Poroshenko about the Article 212 of the Tax Code of Ukraine saying that the intentional tax evasion entails a fine in the amount 1000-2000 times the minimum non-taxable income or deprivation of the right to occupy certain posts or being engaged in certain activities for the period up to three years.

So the Space Elephant can be used to finally get rid of Poroshenko and in particular get rid of him being a candidate for President forever.