State Tax Service has identified signs of a large-scale scheme on the withdrawal of funds abroad involving more than 2 thousand risky companies

Press service of the State Tax Service of Ukraine, published 02 June 2026 at 15:40 Chapter: News

State Tax Service has identified signs of a large-scale scheme on the withdrawal of funds abroad through the network of risky business entities. This concerns more than 2.3 thousand companies that carried out foreign economic operations for more than 198 billion UAH and then virtually disappeared. Analysis indicates signs of a coordinated network of business entities. This was informed by acting Head of the State Tax Service, Lesya Karnaukh. 

State Tax Service received such data after analyzing information from the National Bank for 2024 – first quarter of 2026 regarding violation of payment deadlines.

Vast majority of operations are product export. These are 1 243 companies that exported products worth more than 176 billion UAH, 555 companies imported products worth more than 18 billion UAH.

Most of the companies-violators are concentrated in 7 regions of Ukraine: Odesa, Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia. In total, these regions account for 73% of all violators and 78% of the total volume of such operations.   

“Another fact that caught our attention. Hundreds of companies were subsequently re-registered under the same individuals. Particularly, 1 643 individuals related to the companies-violators are also involved in the management or ownership of more than 42 thousand other companies. Example that is hardly possible for real business. We identified 7 individuals, each of whom is simultaneously the manager or founder of more than 500 companies. In total, more than 7 thousand business entities are under their control” – she stated. 

Among the managers of companies that are wanted, dozens of people head several, and sometimes dozens of such enterprises. For example: 13 people – ten or more such companies, 245 people – two or more companies-violators.

Such concentration of management functions is not typical for real business and indicates signs of organized use of such people as nominal managers. 

In addition, many of companies-violators used the same IP addresses, reported from the same computer networks and were registered at the same addresses. For example, in Kyiv, 20 such companies were registered at one address, and in Lviv, 10 and 13 companies were registered at the separate addresses. Most of them had billion-dollar transactions. 

“It took a lot of time to uncover such scheme. After all, their participants are becoming more and more inventive in ways to mask violations. To establish riskiness of carried out operations, we analyzed data sets using risk-based approaches. Specialists of the State Tax Service use all available tools to counteract such business entities. Based on reports of the National Bank, tax authorities conduct control and verification work according to procedure established by the law – according to its results, more than 70 billion UAH of fines for violations of currency legislation have been accrued in the foreign economic activity” – Lesya Karnaukh added.

Further establishment of all circumstances, circle of involved persons and providing legal assessment of their actions is within competence of the law enforcement agencies. State Tax Service transferred all collected materials to the Prosecutor General’s Office for further processing and decision-making according to legislation. 

State Tax Service has already prepared analytical conclusions for 557 business entities, indicating violations of tax legislation and signs of money laundering.