AP IMPACT: Tax cheats took billions from Ukraine
Source: AP-EXCITE
By MARIA DANILOVA and RAPHAEL SATTER
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — As Ukraine's tax chief tells it, the billion-dollar theft was planned at a see-through plastic table in a vault of sound-proof steel.
The table and six matching transparent chairs sit in a secret chamber on an upper story of the Tax Ministry in Kiev. It was the epicenter, he and other tax officials say, of a massive fraud suspected of squeezing 130 billion hryvnias ($11 billion) from Kiev's coffers over the past three years — an amount equal to more than half a year's tax revenue for the entire country.
Deputy Tax Minister Ihor Bilous, the country's new tax boss, says his predecessor was in on the scam, helping to organize a wide network of phantom firms in return for a cut of the cash. The criminals, he says, operated with impunity.
"They didn't care about the police, the security services. Nobody was checking," Bilous told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "That's why this cancer ... spread over the whole country."
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140610/eu--ukraine-billion_dollar_scam-a5fe621768.html
In this May 23, 2014, photo, Ukraine{2019}s First Deputy Tax Minister of Revenue and Duties Ihor Bilous works on a computer in his office in Kiev. Bilous says that a massive tax scam overseen by his predecessors squeezed billions of dollars out of his country{2019}s budget. Outside experts support Bilous{2019} claims, and documents reviewed by the AP, including tax records, a list of alleged phantom companies drawn up by a Ukrainian anti-corruption group, and data from the business intelligence website Arachnys, echo his description of a wide ranging scheme. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)
= new reply since forum marked as read
