Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
A Billion-Dollar Hole: How Large-Scale Import Schemes Drain Money from Ukraine
While the country remains critically dependent on international tranches to cover basic needs, the domestic budget continues to miss out on billions of hryvnias due to the shadow import sector, which is astounding in scale.
Official statistics from the State Customs Service for the first 7 months of 2026 year show a mismatch in Ukraine's economy. Total trade turnover stood at 82,2 billion dollars, but the share of exports in it was only 24,1 billion dollars.
As a result, with a huge volume of imports at 58,1 billion dollars, the negative balance of trade reached 34 billion dollars. In other words, import volumes exceed exports by 2,4 times. Part of this trade deficit is the consequence of massive fraud, where “technical” import schemes play one of the leading roles.
The essence of the “technical” import scheme lies in repeatedly inflating the value of goods imported into Ukraine to move currency abroad. These schemes hit every Ukrainian’s pocket, as they create a constant currency deficit on the interbank market and put pressure on the hryvnia exchange rate. At the same time, the state budget misses out on billions in domestic revenues.
Experts have already identified a list of legal entities nationwide (from Dnipro to Chernivtsi) that, by the end of January–July 2026 year, played a leading role in the “technical” import schemes:
1. 34349259 LLC "THEME FASHION UKRAINe" - Kyiv; 2. 45441657 LLC "LOUDER TRADE" - Dnipropetrovsk region; 3. 45989530 LLC "IMPORT HUB" - Mykolaiv region; 4. 45848272 LLC "HANDEL COMPANY" - Kyiv; 5. 45752030 LLC "BESTCOMTORG" - Kyiv; 6. 44009348 LLC "GALANTERIA CLOTHING AND TRIFLES" - Kyiv; 7. 45598857 LLC "CONTOUR LOGIST" - Dnipropetrovsk region; 8. 46160497 LLC "CHUKVIL" - Kyiv; 9. 45619159 LLC "FASHION WAVE" - Kharkiv region; 10. 46016650 LLC "LONGARD" - Zhytomyr region; 11. 32790585 LLC "POLYSTAR" - Chernivtsi region; 12. 45516989 LLC "CENTRE FOR PURCHASES" - Kharkiv region; 13. 45659982 LLC "GLOBINEKS" - Kyiv; 14. 44548370 LLC "TRANSGLOBAL" - Lviv region; 15. 43848244 LLC "TOYSMEN" - Odesa region; 16. ...
More to come...
More details about this and other schemes - exclusively on the channel "One Hundred Thousand".
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Діра на мільярди доларів: як масштабні схеми з імпортом вимивають гроші з України". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.