In the history of the BEB detectives uncovering a conversion center with turnover of 23,5 billion, there is a very impor...

In the history of the BEB detectives uncovering a conversion center with turnover of 23,5 billion, there is a very important detail worth noting.

The execution of this large-scale operation — and that is no exaggeration, since the scheme involved 200 client companies, 97 shell companies and 8 thousand!!! sole proprietors — took place precisely at the moment the State Tax Service of Ukraine completely slipped out of Ruslan Kravchenko’s control and the tax authority lost the “protection of the Office of the Prosecutor General.”

Let’s go through the chronology.

5 September NABU launches operation “CARTHAGE.”

7 September NABU strikes the Ternopil tax office, where the leadership of the State Tax Service collects a 11,5% kickback from VAT refunds to businesses.

14 September the President suspends Ruslan Kravchenko from the position of Prosecutor General.

14 September Prime Minister Koretsky suspends Lesya Karnaukh from her acting position as Head of the State Tax Service.

17 September Karnaukh files a resignation letter from the position of First Deputy Head of the State Tax Service.

21 September BEB proceeds to execute against a very large conversion center.

The episode that demonstrates Kravchenko’s full control over the State Tax Service is that the main operative in operation “Carthage,” Serhiy Kropyva, had his own quota to appoint deputies to Karnaukh’s team, and that appointee turned out to be the “numbers deputy” Ihor Panchenko.

On NABU recordings, Kravchenko even congratulated Kropyva on the appointment of “his deputy” in the State Tax Service.

That Lesya Karnaukh came to the State Tax Service from the position of Kravchenko’s deputy in the Kyiv Regional State Administration when he moved to the Prosecutor General’s Office, I think, is already known to everyone.

So, from the moment Kravchenko took the acting position of Head of the State Tax Service in 2024 and until the “Carthage” events in September 2026, everything that happened in the tax authority was controlled by him or by people subordinate to him.

This was his vertical, which from the height of the Prosecutor General’s office also provided protection at the highest level — including for schemes inside the State Tax Service.

And the fact that conversion centers and control over their activities are always an integral part of the State Tax Service’s shadow architecture is known even to schoolchildren.

Non-goods transactions, “skrutky” (layering), creation of fictitious VAT are never possible without the involvement of tax officials.

This is not the customs service, where you can pass a full truck off as empty and two hours later no one can prove whether it was full or empty.

In the system of money flows there is always a trace that allows tax officials, without leaving their computer, to expose any conversion center.

Literally three clicks of the mouse.

But that did not happen, because control of such conversion centers is one of the main sources of shadow income for the State Tax Service and their “patrons.”

And since we have already established the links between the State Tax Service and the Office of the Prosecutor General, it is quite obvious why during 2024 – 2026 we did not see any high-profile investigations either into tax officials or into tax schemes.

Even public investigations like the one into the “excise on bioethanol” had no prospect of reaction from the State Tax Service or law enforcement.

The slogan “This is our cow and we’ll keep milking it” best describes the state of affairs here.

That is why BEB detectives could gather as much information as they wanted on conversion centers and other sensitive tax issues, but final enforcement against them was impossible for a long time.

And this despite the fact that there are quite a few decent people in the General Prosecutor’s Office who are ready to support such measures.

But the middle level determines little in the strategy of action of an agency — whether tax, customs, or prosecution.

That is why the period of conditional powerlessness in the Office of the Prosecutor General and the State Tax Service gives the agencies an opportunity to work a bit not according to informal rules, but according to the law.

So now we see the execution of everything that had been kept under the table, in drawers and safes.

Let’s just make it faster and more extensive. New teams with new “principles” and lists of firms and people will come in now, and once again we’ll be waiting for the “shift change.”