AP IMPACT: Tax cheats took billions from Ukraine

http://www.adn.com/2014/06/09/3509204/ap-impact-tax-cheats-took-billions.html?sp=/99/171/



n this Friday, May 23, 2014 photo, a clear plastic table and chairs are seen in a soundproof vault built into the heart of Kiev’s tax ministry. Officials here say that a massive tax fraud overseen by senior members of the previous government squeezed billions of dollars out of their country’s budget - and that some of the corrupt deals may have been struck inside this vault. Officials say the vault is equipped with thick walls and a white noise generator to prevent eavesdropping; they add that the transparent furniture was intended to reassure the vault’s users that their conversations weren’t being bugged.

AP IMPACT: Tax cheats took billions from Ukraine
By MARIA DANILOVA and RAPHAEL SATTER
The Associated Press
June 9, 2014 Updated 2 minutes ago

KIEV, Ukraine — As Ukraine's tax chief tells it, the billion-dollar theft was planned at a clear plastic table in a sound-proof vault.

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."