Detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine have served a notice of suspicion to the acting first deputy board chairman of an oil refining company, the BES press centre has reported.
More than 43% of the company's assets belong to the state. The official is suspected of intentional tax evasion on a particularly large scale. A bail of almost UAH 200 million was selected for him.
The investigation established that in January 2022, the company's officials declared an excise tax payable by the oil refinery with a payment deadline of 2 March 2022, but deliberately failed to transfer UAH 605.9m of tax to the state budget.
Authorized searches are currently underway at the oil refinery's fuel and lubricant wherehouses, and other episodes of criminal activity of officials of this and other oil refining companies are being investigated.
The pre-trial investigation in the criminal proceedings on the grounds of a criminal offence stipulated by Article 212 Part 3 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (intentional evasion of value added tax, customs duty, which led to actual non-receipt of funds to the state budget in especially large amounts) is carried out by detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine under the procedural supervision of the Prosecutor-General's Office.
As reported earlier, BES and the SBU uncovered schemes to misappropriate UAH 40 billion by the former management of the Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta oil companies.
Prosecutor-General Andriy Kostin said that the acting first deputy board chairman of Ukrtatnafta was notified of suspicion of intentional tax evasion.