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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
A very important detail deserves attention in the BEB detectives’ exposure of a conversion center with a turnover of 23,5 billion.
The execution of this large-scale operation — and that is no exaggeration, since the scheme involved 200 client enterprises, 97 shell companies and 8 thousand!!! private entrepreneurs — took place precisely at the moment the State Tax Service of Ukraine completely slipped out of the control of Ruslan Kravchenko’s group and the tax service 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 at the Ternopil tax office, where the leadership of the State Tax Service collects a 11,5% kickback from VAT refunds to business.
14 September the President suspends Ruslan Kravchenko from the office 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 post of First Deputy Head of the State Tax Service.
21 September BEB moves to execute against the very large conversion center.
The episode demonstrating Kravchenko’s full control over the State Tax Service is illustrated by how the main operative in operation “Carthage,” Serhiy Kropyva, had his own quota for appointing deputies to Karnaukh’s team, who turned out to be the “deputy for numbers,” Ihor Panchenko. On NABU tapes, 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 at the Kyiv Regional State Administration when he moved to the Prosecutor General’s Office, I think, is already known to everyone.
Thus, from the moment Kravchenko assumed the acting post of Head of the State Tax Service in 2024 until the time of “Carthage” in September 2026, everything that happened in the tax service was controlled by him or by people under his control.
That was his vertical, which from the height of the Prosecutor General’s office also provided the highest level of security — including for schemes inside the State Tax Service.
And the fact that conversion centers and the control of their activities have always been an integral part of the State Tax Service’s shadow architecture is known even to schoolchildren.
Goods-less transactions, roll-ups, and the creation of fictitious VAT are never possible without the 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 money flow system a trail always remains that allows tax officials, without leaving their computer, to expose any conversion center.
Literally three mouse clicks.
But that did not happen, because control over 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 connection between the State Tax Service and the Office of the Prosecutor General, it is quite clear why during 2024 – 2026 we did not see any major investigations either into tax officials or into tax schemes.
Even public investigations like the “excise on bioethanol” type had no prospects for a response from the State Tax Service or law enforcement.
The slogan “This is our cow and we will milk it” best describes the state of affairs here.
That is why BEB detectives could gather information on conversion centers and other sensitive tax subjects as much as they wanted, but final enforcement against them was impossible for a long time.
And that is despite the fact that there are plenty of 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 a period of conditional powerlessness in the OPG and the State Tax Service gives agencies the opportunity to work a bit not by unwritten rules, but by law.
So now we see the execution of everything that was kept under the table, in drawers and safes.
Let’s just make it faster and larger. New teams with new “principles” and lists of firms and people will come in now, and once again we will wait for a “shift change.”
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Руслана Кравченка усунули в межах кадрового перезавантаження податкової: БЕБ викрило конвертаційний центр з оборотом понад 20 мільярдів гривень". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
