Journalist Yevhen Plinsky stated that Anatoliy Kostyukh, a member of parliament from the Servant of the People faction, and his assistant may be involved in the activities of Ukraine's largest network for the production and sale of illegal e-cigarettes, UVAPE. The Bureau of Economic Security recently conducted large-scale searches in this network.
According to Plinsky, UVAPE has more than 150 points of sale across the country, most of which operate in Kyiv. The company is officially registered as FREITIS LLC, owned by Daniil Popkov. This company was created only in July 2024. Before that, the business operated through ZENTOS LLC, which was also owned by Popkov. After the April 2025 scandal, the ZENTOS company was re-registered under the name of Uzbek citizen Umidzhan Teshaboev.
As it turned out, the main supplier of UVAPE was LLC "Tisa Energy Group" (37156380), registered in Uzhgorod and owned by Ivan Cheypesh, an assistant to People's Deputy Kostyukh. In April of this year, this company was involved in the case of smuggling 149.8 thousand NEW AIR electronic cigarettes and 74.9 thousand VAAL 800E with a total value of over 200 thousand dollars. The documents indicated "Tisa Energy Group" as the recipient of the goods, and according to operational information, the final point of sale was the UVAPE network.
In the e-cigarette market, Ivan Cheypesh is considered the de facto beneficiary of UVAPE, and MP Kostyukh is considered a political front. Additional attention is drawn to the fact that Cheypesh's wife, Inna Mykhailivna Cheypesh, holds the position of head of the department for licensing trade in excisable goods and storage of fuel at the State Tax Service in the Transcarpathian region.
BEB searches and journalistic investigations could be the beginning of a large-scale criminal case that will affect not only business structures, but also political figures.
