Oleksandr Tsyvinsky, Director of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine, outlined the key "shadow schemes" through which the state loses hundreds of billions of hryvnias every year. According to him, these are the areas that generate the largest amounts of shortfalls in the state budget and remain a serious challenge to the country's financial security.
Among the leaders in terms of losses, Tsyvinsky named counterfeiting and illegal trade in excisable goods. According to preliminary estimates, these schemes cost the budget over 50 billion hryvnias each year. Even more significant are violations of customs regulations, shadow export-import operations, and smuggling - we are talking about approximately 150 billion hryvnias per year.
A separate niche is occupied by the activities of conversion and transit centers, which, according to BEB estimates, "cost" the budget 40–50 billion hryvnias annually. The largest losses are associated with tax evasion in the field of labor remuneration. The use of salaries "in envelopes" and the involvement of individual entrepreneurs as a tool for minimizing taxes, according to various estimates, leads to losses of 250–300 billion hryvnias.
Tsyvinsky stressed that these amounts are approximate, as it is extremely difficult to accurately calculate what is in the shadows. At the same time, the scale of the problem indicates that a significant part of the funds that could be used for the economy and defense simply do not reach the budget.
The head of the BEB emphasized that the task of the bureau — in close cooperation with other law enforcement and regulatory bodies — is to gradually bring these hundreds of billions of hryvnias out of the shadows and ensure their receipt into the state treasury.
He specifically drew attention to the difference between visible corruption schemes and the so-called latent shadow economy. According to him, investigative journalists and law enforcement officers have learned to control the use of budget funds quite effectively, particularly in the field of public procurement, when inflated prices become obvious to society.
At the same time, the biggest losses often remain unnoticed, because it is not about the theft of already allocated funds, but about money that did not make it to the budget at all. It is with such "invisible" schemes, according to Tsyvinsky, that it is the most difficult to work with, but at the same time the most important.
