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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
In the history of the BEB detectives uncovering a conversion center with a turnover of 23,5 billion, there is a very important detail that deserves attention.
The execution of this large-scale operation, and it truly is so, because it involved 200 client companies, 97 intermediary firms, and 8 thousands of entrepreneurs, happened exactly at the moment when the Ukrainian tax service fully exited from the grasp of Ruslan Kravchenko’s group and lost the “roof of the Office of the Prosecutor General” over the tax authority.
Let's break down the chronology.
5 September, UBAs (NABU) go out with operation “Carthage.”
7 September, NABU strikes the Ternopil Tax Authority, where the Tax Authority leadership collects 11,5% kickbacks 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 the acting Chair of the State Tax Service.
17 September, Karnaukh writes a resignation letter from the position of first deputy Chair of the State Tax Service.
21 September, BEB moves to implement the super-large conversion center.
Evidence of full control by Kravchenko over the Tax Authority is the episode in which the central figure of the “Carthage” operation, Serhiy Kropiva, had his own quota for appointing Karnaukh’s deputies, who turned out to be the “number guy” Igor Panchenko. In NABU’s tapes Kravchenko even greets Kropiva for appointing his deputy to the Tax Authority.
That Lesya Karnaukh came to the Tax Authority from Kravchenko’s deputy position in KOVA when he went to the Office of the Prosecutor General, I think everyone already knows.
That is, from the moment Kravchenko took the post of acting head of the Tax Authority in 2024 until the time of “Carthage” in September 2026, everything happening in the tax service was controlled by him or by people under his influence.
This is his vertical authority, which from the height of the Prosecutor General’s office also ensured top-level security, including schemes inside the Tax Authority.
Well, and the fact that conversion centers and the control of their activities have always been an integral part of the shadow architecture of the Tax Service is something even schoolchildren know.
Non‑goods operations, skimming, creation of fake VAT could never happen without the participation of tax authorities.
This is not customs, where you can let a full truck through under the guise of empty, and in two hours no one will prove whether it was full or empty.
In the money movement system there is always a trace that allows tax authorities, without leaving their computers, to uncover any conversion center.
Literally three clicks of a mouse.
But this did not happen, because control of such conversion centers is one of the main sources of shadow income for the Tax Service and their “patrons.”
And since we have already established a link between the Tax Service and the Office of the Prosecutor General, it is quite obvious why in the period 2024 – 2026 we did not see, neither loud investigations into the tax authorities nor into tax schemes.
Even public investigations like the “bioethanol excise” did not have prospects of a reaction from the Tax Authority or the security forces.
The slogan “This is our cow and we will milk it” best describes the situation here.
That is why the BEB detectives could gather as much information as they wanted about conversion centers and other sensitive tax topics, but the final implementation for them was long impossible.
And this is despite the fact that the Prosecutor General’s Office has plenty of decent people who are ready to support such measures.
But the middle level determines little in the strategy of action of the agency. Both the Tax Authority and the Customs Service, and the Prosecutor’s Office.
That is why the period of nominal lack of power in the Office of the Prosecutor General and the Tax Authority allows the agencies to do a bit more by law rather than by understanding.
Therefore we are now witnessing the realization of everything that had been kept under the table, in drawers, and safes.
Let's move faster and bigger. New teams with new “principles” and lists of firms and people are entering now, and we will again be waiting for a “reshuffle.”
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Після усунення Кравченка БЕБ викрило конвертаційний центр на 23,5 мільярда: що коїлося в податковій системі до кадрового перезавантаження". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
