The government and the National Bank are preparing a bill to create a special register of so-called “drops” — individuals and sole proprietors whose accounts are considered risky. It has already been registered in the Verkhovna Rada under number 14161. According to the document, the National Bank of Ukraine will have the right to maintain a centralized list of people through whose accounts “suspicious” transactions are made. Banks and payment institutions will be able to quickly add clients to it, and the status in this register will automatically mean restrictions on financial transactions.
What exactly is being proposed? If a person is included in the register, banks will limit the number of accounts and cards, reduce limits on payments and transfers, and all transactions of such a client will be subject to enhanced monitoring. This concerns individuals and entrepreneurs, not large companies. The term of such restrictions can reach up to two years. According to the authors, this should block money laundering channels through “drops” — people who, for a reward, give their card details to transfer large amounts of cash to non-cash transactions, for gambling services, and other gray schemes.
The logic of the bill is simple and strict: if the activity on the account looks “not yours” — for example, the payment volumes do not correspond to official income, or the same IP address/device is used to manage several different cards, or the transactions have signs of typical cash-non-cash “pumping” — the client may be recognized as risky and put in this register. The bank does not need to wait for a court verdict for money laundering.
The documentation positions this step as a fight against the shadow economy, in particular against underground payment services, conversion centers, and pseudo-legal casinos operating through drop networks. The idea looks attractive: if small pockets are blocked, large gray flows will simply disappear. This is how both the authors of the bill and the specialized media present it.
The problem begins where the press release logic ends. All new control tools are aimed at the final link — the average cardholder, student, "FOP" entrepreneur, who was recognized as "risky." But the major sources of these flows — the organizers of the schemes — remain practically out of the picture.
A telling moment: one of the main Ukrainian business publications that actively writes about the threat of “dropping” is owned by businessman Artur Granz. Granz is the majority owner of the publishing company Forbes Ukraine after the brand returned to the country; he openly positions himself as the person who “brought Forbes back to Ukraine” and controls the structure behind the publication.
And here begins the main issue of trust. For years, Granz's name has appeared in investigations into gray cash flows and smuggling. He controls or controlled duty free networks at border crossings - in particular, "SP DUTY FREE TRADING", "MELLO DUTY FREE", "Autoport-Chop" - which, according to the estimates of deputies and members of temporary investigative commissions, were key channels for removing cigarettes and alcohol "bypassing customs". Journalists and law enforcement officers suggest that the volume of cigarette sales through such points exceeded the real flow of passengers many times, which indicated not legal sales to tourists, but a constant "transfer" of tobacco into the shadows.
Shadow tobacco is no small matter. According to market estimates, smuggling and evasion of excise duty on cigarettes in Ukraine are measured in billions of hryvnias every year and directly hit the state budget. This segment - duty free at the border - has long been called one of the centers of enrichment of people associated with the owners of the network. Public investigations directly mentioned Granz's name as one of the beneficiaries of such schemes, and his business has repeatedly come under the scrutiny of parliamentary commissions due to suspicions of smuggling. Granz himself publicly rejects the accusations and says that his networks operate within the law, and calls the stories about "hundreds of trucks of contraband through duty free" manipulations by competitors and politicians.
Another key block is online gambling. The gambling market in Ukraine after legalization has become a huge money pump, and one of the largest players is Vbet. This brand is associated with the same Artur Granz as the actual head/key beneficiary in Ukraine. According to journalistic publications, it was through such online casinos that money laundering and tax minimization schemes were built for years, including the so-called "miscoding" - replacing the transaction code, when the payment for the game is disguised as something completely different, so that banks pass the operation without unnecessary questions. Then these funds were distributed along the chain - through "drops", shell FOPs and cards of individuals, and then withdrawn to offshore, including Cyprus and the UAE.
It is these flows — gambling, cash, duty-free corridors of tobacco and alcohol — that create demand for “drops.” That is, not the other way around: not drop → scheme, but scheme → drop. But the bill and all the rhetoric around the “risk account register” focus not on those who generate money, but on those through whom it is funneled.
This is the main contradiction. The state says that it will take people who have “something wrong with their transactions” under strict control, limit the number of cards they have, put them under constant financial supervision, and may actually paralyze their accounts for up to two years. But will the question of where the cash flows themselves come from, how the “envelopes” work, who is behind the miscoding, and who really makes money on drops be worked out just as rigorously? The draft law does not provide an answer to this.
Politically, it looks like this. Banks are being prepared with a new duty: to monitor their own customers, record suspicious behavior and immediately share it with the National Bank. The NBU will maintain a centralized "black list" available to the entire banking system. A person with such a status may have their ability to make payments reduced, their usual p2p transfers blocked, and their work restricted. And all this without a trial at the start.
That is, the state gets a lever of pressure at the micro level — on an individual citizen. But whether it will get at least some tool against those who have been described in investigations for years as beneficiaries of smuggling, duty free schemes, and shadow gambling flows — is an open question. And this is what makes the story with the “drop register” so sensitive.
