The Story of How Mr. Groysman and Mr. Kononenko Subdivided the Fiscal Body

There are a lot of assumptions that the pending elections became their bone of contention. It’s been supposed that Poroshenko considered Groysman to be his rival that’s why he wanted to reduce Groysman’s illegal income received from the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine.

However, it all is nothing but a fantastic bluff. Poroshenko and Groysman are factually a single integrated whole aimed at stealing as much money out of the customs and taxes as possible.

To prove the aforementioned statement I provide you the documents indicating that the most lucrative positions at the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine were assigned through Ihor Kononenko.

The list of candidates was being drawn up by Nina Yuzhanina (under the guise of a lustration list) as far back as in 2015. Being completed, the list was submitted to the President’s partner for further endorsement.

ALL OF THESE INDIVIDUALS CONTROL THE FINANCIAL FLOWS AT THE CUSTOMS HOUSE AND THE STATE FISCAL SERVICE AT THE MONENT.

On May 14, 2015 Nina Yuzhanina sent an e-mail to Ihor Kononenko, Head of the Fraction of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc at the Parliament and Poroshenko’s principal problem solver. The subject of the e-mail was titled as ‘A Promise’ and the attached document included the list of 12 candidates for key positions at the fiscal body of the state.

The table attached to the e-mail was personally completed by Nina Yuzhanina. There were 15 more candidates added up to the list after the approval with Kononenko.

On May 22, 2015 Mrs. Yuzhanina forwarded the updated list to her assistant Kateryna Hudymenko for its further processing.

In this particular case there were enlisted candidates aspiring to senior positions at the fiscal body (tax and fiscal services) of Ukraine. The assignment campaign covered the fiscal central body in Kyiv, Kyiv region and other regions of the country like Zaporizhia, Odessa, Lviv, Kirovohrad, Mykolayiv, Khmelnytskyi, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Having looked at the table, it becomes quite clear that some of the candidates for the most ‘tempting’ positions were appointed personally by Mr. Kononenko. For instance, have a look at the positon of Head of the State Fiscal Service in Kyiv.

At the same time Mr. Kononenko took into consideration likings of people from his environment that is deputies from Petro Poroshenko Bloc Hennadyi Chekita and Maksym Kuryachyi. Oleksandr Herega, former representative of the Party of Regions, deputy and owner of the hypermarket ‘Epitsentr’, was among the supervisors controlling key appointments for senior positions at Kyiv and Sumy customs offices.

And Borys Lozhkin was lobbying the assignment campaign at JSC Ukrzaliznytsia through Hryhoryi Shverk, his partner and deputy from Petro Poroshenko Bloc.

So, I’m about to represent the ‘brightest’ candidates enlisted by Mrs. Yuzhanina:

• The first place may go to Lyudmyla Demchenko, current Head of the State Fiscal Service of Kyiv. She was assigned to leading posts at the regional inspections in Kyiv during the presidency of Yanukovych. After the revolution of 2014 she went underground and became Yuzhanina’s assistant and only in 2015 Lyudmyla was assigned as head of fiscals in Kyiv owing to Yuzhanina too. No matter how close she was to being lustrated, Lyudmyla Demchenko managed to stay afloat through the court. By the way, she also led the work of conversion centers that laundered approximately 20 billion UAH. Demchenko and Kononenko started their friendly relationship as far back as in October 2012 when Lyudmyla worked as First Deputy Chief at Pechersk Tax Service in Kyiv and led the liquidation of two enterprises – ‘Mriya-Reklama’advertising agency and ‘Ukrprominvest’ concern. Both enterprises belonged to Poroshenko. Ihor Kononenko functioned as their director/liquidator. In the period from 2011 till 2012 the officials of the concern ‘Ukrprominvest’ were under suspicion of intended tax evasion in a particularly large amount of 4.3mln UAH in total.

• A second important person out of the list is Ihor Kondo. At that time he was Deputy Head of the Regional Inspection in Lviv. After Kononenko’s approval, he was assigned as Head of the Principal Department of the State Fiscal Service in Lviv Region in August 2015. Such a position was taken by Kondo bypassing the general competition. Moreover, he dodged the lustration as well. For the whole period of his service, Mr. Kondo has been engaged in a corruptive activity ‘selling’ positions and ‘covering’ dummy firms and conversion centers.

• Stanislav Kosinov. He was initially proposed as candidate for a senior post at the Principal Department of the State Fiscal Service in Kharkiv Region. However, he had to work as Acting Deputy Chief of the State Audit Service of Ukraine for a long time. Most probably, that position was rather lucrative and Mr. Kasiniv had no intentions of changing it. Well, he didn’t face any hindrances even though the following appointment to a post was fulfilled without any competition and presupposed holding two offices at a time. He was not subject to lustration as well, despite the fact that he held senior positions during Yanukovych’s presidency and was his authorized representative in Kharkiv. The family of Mr. Kosinov ran the biggest companies of Kharkiv getting the largest tenders.

• Yuriy Mostipan. He was initially proposed as candidate for a position at the Regional Inspection of Kyiv he had led earlier. Eventually, he was even promoted to Deputy Head of Selected Issues Resolution Department of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. Yuriy Mostipan is the same person that was arrested in 2017 together with the other chiefs of regional and local bodies of the State Tax Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Revenues and Duties of Klymenko’s times. They were under suspicion of organizing the so-cold tax plots. He was later released on bail of 1mln UAH. For now Mr. Mostipan holds a post as Deputy Chief of Staff of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine.

• Deputy Oleksandr Hereha was responsible for two posts at Kyiv and Sumy Customs Offices at once. The position of Head of Department of Goods Transmission Control of the Customs Control Administration and Registration at Kyiv Municipal Customs Office of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine was taken by Viktor Nesmiyan. He currently works as Head of Department at Kyiv Municipal Customs Office of the State Fiscal Service. And Sumy Customs Office was headed by Oleksandr Hutsol till October 2017. This person is known as a big smuggler. The damage inflicted by his schemes to the budget of Ukraine resulted in tens of millions of UAH the budget lacked on a monthly basis. Vsevolod Hutsal, elder son of Oleksandr Hutsol, was also involved in smuggling at Lviv Customs Office.

• Hennadyi Chekita, Petro Poroshenko Bloc Deputy, tried to lobby the appointment of his protégés to positions at the State Fiscal Service in Odessa. His name can be found in a numerous scandals that took place in Odessa. To arrange the appointments, Mr. Chekita appealed to Kononenko’s mediator Nina Yuzhanina on May 18, 2015 and proposed Yevhen Hubaryev as Head of the State Fiscal Service of Malynivsky district of Odessa (referring to his majority district No.134 territorially). He even sent a testimonial describing Mr. Hubaryev so that he could be assigned to the post. The second e-mail from him contained the CV and biography of Andryi Homa who was proposed as Head of the State Fiscal Service of Suvorovskyi/Malynovskyi districts in Odessa. Those assignments didn’t take place anyway.

I can assume that Poroshenko and Groysman has been engaged in placement of people at the State Fiscal Service in each region all over the country and in so doing they have controlled all of the financial flows of corruptive nature.

There is no need to apply any efforts to identify these financial flows; furthermore, Volodymyr Groysman made those amounts public. For instance, he pointed out in his recent statement that the Ukrainian budget annually received 70 billion UAH obtained in the course of fighting the contraband. This very amount is a key one to be taken into consideration while estimating the funds received by the presidential team applying to corruptive means.