Kravchenko Removed — After the SEB, a Conversion Center Handling 23,5 Billion Was Exposed: What Happened in the Tax System Before the Personnel Purge

In the story of the SEB 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’s no exaggeration, since the scheme involved 200 client companies, 97 front companies, and 8 thousand!!! sole proprietors—took place precisely at the moment the State Tax Service of Ukraine fully slipped out of the control of Ruslan Kravchenko’s group and the tax agency lost the “cover” 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 was collecting 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 submits her resignation from the post of First Deputy Head of the State Tax Service.

21 September the SEB moves to execute against a very large conversion center.

The full control of the State Tax Service by Kravchenko is evidenced by an episode in which the main operative in the “Carthage” operation, Serhiy Kropyva, had his own quota to appoint deputies to Karnaukh’s team, one of whom turned out to be the “deputy for numbers” 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 until the time of “Carthage” in September 2026, everything that happened in the tax agency 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 top-level protection— including for schemes inside the State Tax Service.

And the fact that conversion centers and their oversight have always been an integral part of the Tax Service’s shadow architecture is known even to schoolchildren.

Goods-free transactions, roll-ups, and the creation of fictitious VAT are never possible without participation of tax officials.

This is not the customs service, where you can let a full truck pass 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 trail that allows tax officials, without leaving their computers, to expose any conversion center.

Literally three clicks of the mouse.

But that didn’t 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 link between the State Tax Service and the Office of the Prosecutor General, it’s quite clear why during the period 2024–2026 we did not see any high-profile investigations either into tax officials or into tax schemes.

Even public investigations like the “excise on bioethanol” had no prospect of action from the tax agency or law enforcement.

The slogan “This is our cow and we will milk it” best describes the situation.

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

And that’s despite the fact that there are plenty of decent people in the Prosecutor General’s Office who are ready to support such measures.

But the middle level has little influence on an agency’s strategy—whether tax, customs, or prosecution.

That is why a period of relative power vacuum in the OPG and the State Tax Service gives authorities the chance to work a bit more according to the law rather than according to informal rules.

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

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