In February 2023, employees of the State Bureau of Investigation exposed the head of the Tax Service of Kyiv, Oksana Datiy, in multimillion-dollar embezzlement. During the search, they found notes of wishes about 1 million dollars, fur coats and trips in the woman. A year passed, and the case was gradually forgotten.
What's more, the woman even sued for her reinstatement, writing a book on etiquette at the same time and not even thinking about being responsible for the schemes in which amounts of tens of billions of hryvnias appeared.
The reason is that Datiya's "curators" have a very strong influence on everything that is happening now in the Tax Office. These are former policemen Serhii Vyazmikin and Igor Kupranets and their companion from the banned "Opposition Platform - For Life" Igor Abramovich. The names of Vyazmikin and Abramovich are in the news because of the "Monaco Battalion" investigation, because this couple was spotted at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. The journalists found out that the former acting the head of the Department of Economic Protection of the National Police and the ex-deputy from the OPZZH live in the same villa. Due to this investigation, the SBI even opened a case regarding the legality of crossing the border of all participants of the "Monaco battalion". However, no news about this has been heard for a year.
But there were just conversations about how Vyazmikin and Abramovich could afford a vacation in Monaco. Immediately after the arrest and search of the lover of the elite from the Kyiv tax office, a meeting of the Temporary Investigative Commission on corruption in the DPS was held in the Verkhovna Rada. At it, journalist Yuriy Butusov was heard separately, who explained in the language of numbers which illegal schemes tax officials make the most money from. According to him, the basis is the blocking of tax invoices, which completely makes the work of enterprises impossible. You can unlock them only by paying a bribe. Moreover, the blocking occurs for almost half of all registered companies undergoing inspection.
Another topic revolves around the excise department, which has recently spread its wings like an Atlas. It is in this context that Butusov mentions the names of Vyazmikin, Abramovich and the former head of the Department of Economic Protection of the National Police of Ukraine, Ihor Kuprants.
The latter was scandalized even during the time when Arsen Avakov was the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was accused of illegal enrichment, involvement in companies that won contracts for port security, and constant milking of business. The Department of Economic Protection in the Police is something like the scandalous "Department K" in the SBU. In essence, both of these institutions should fight corruption and protect business, but in fact, one can only recall how SBUshnyk Demchyn registered his apartments, cars and wealth earned from "working with business" to his civil wife.
Kupranets has worked in the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs since the end of the 90s and is considered the "ideological founder of the Department of Economic Protection", as his Wikipedia page pathetically reports. However, after working in the ministry until 2019, he was remembered only for undeclared cars, a gifted apartment and his wife's illegal business in the Chernobyl zone.
According to the media, Kupranets managed to get close to Serhiy Vyazmikin, who was his boss, during his time at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In the "Department of Business Nightmare", as it is jokingly called, they managed to develop a good base of enterprises from which they continue to "feed". At the same time, in 2019, another member joined their group - Igor Abramovych, a former deputy from the pro-Russian OPZZH. He was a member of the Tax Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, where he was kindly invited by the chairman of this committee and personal friend Danylo Hetmantsev.
Around this time, the trio switched to working with excise goods. According to analysts and representatives of the parliament, the gray market of tobacco products reached its peak last year and began to make up more than 20%. What is happening with illegal alcohol is not even worth talking about. If Igor Abramovich is more associated with cigarettes, Serhiy Vyazmikin is associated with alcohol because of his father-in-law Oleksandr Sitak.
Vyazmikin's wife, Oksana, comes from a wealthy family of farmers in the Zhytomyr region.
She heads the "First Ukrainian Agrarian Company" LLC, which has a registered Mercedes, which the former policeman uses to move around Monaco. But her father manages the "Berdychiv Malt Company", which is a large producer of malt. Do we need to say that the agricultural companies of the Sitak-Viazmikin family never have problems with the Tax Office, while other agrarian businessmen do not have such privileges.
And this despite the fact that the family comes from the Russian Federation, and Vyazmikin's wife could have had a passport with a double-headed eagle until 2016. At least her Russian citizenship is mentioned in the court decision, which was related to violations of traffic rules. In order not to fall out of the tax topic after the scandalous dismissal of Oksana Datia mentioned at the beginning, Vyazmikin, Abramovich and Kuprants have other people of their own in the system.
In particular, judging by the declaration submitted in January 2024, Serhiy Vyazmikin's mother, Tetyana Nikyforivna, works as the deputy head of the DPS department of the Holosiiv district of Kyiv. Prior to that, she held the position of Chief State Inspector of the DPS of Kyiv. Abramovich also has his own proven staff at the Tax Office of Kyiv.
This is Inna Yakushko, the deputy of the dismissed Datia. The woman has been working in the DPS for a long time, and even managed to work hard for the wallet of the head of the Ministry of Revenue and Duties, which was headed by the infamous Oleksandr Klymenko during Yanukovych's time. It was not possible to trace the documentary connection between Abramovich and Yakushko, but this information is actively discussed in Telegram channels related to tax issues. Former People's Deputy Ihor Mosiychuk wrote last year that Vyazmikin, Kupranets and Abramovych were behind the schemes in the Tax Office.
And Danylo Hetmantsev, the head of the Tax Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, allegedly covers it. After Abramovych drafted the mandate of a deputy of the Ukrainian parliament, Hetmantsev even thanked him for his work, despite his affiliation with the banned "Opposition Platform - For Life." Hetmantsev has a certain tendency to befriend enemies. The fact is that for three convocations in a row he was an assistant to the "regional" Volodymyr Sivkovich, who is currently suspected of treason. Sivkovich is accused not only of personal supervision during the dispersal of the Revolution of Dignity rally, but also of active cooperation with the FSB of Russia since the 1990s. The Ukrainian investigation documented a meeting between Sivkovych and the Secretary of the Russian National Security and Defense Council, Mykola Patrushev, in October 2013 to coordinate actions to suppress alleged rallies in support of Ukraine's European integration. It is even difficult to imagine what the current "Servant of the People" Danylo Hetmantsev could advise such a person.
Another member of the Tax Committee, deputy from "Servant of the People" Maryan Zablotsky, mentions the names of Vyazmikin, Kuprants and Abramovych in the context of possible schemes for excise goods. In particular, as early as December 2022, he said: "In my opinion, there are factories to which the Tax Office does not pay enough attention. I heard the names Kupranets and Vyazmikin more than once, which were mentioned in the report about the Monaco battalion... I cannot provide any evidence, but I can say that at the tax committee, some deputies asked the chairman of the committee about it."
All these active discussions among senior officials, rumors in Telegram channels, crazy fortunes of former policemen Vyazmikin and Kuprants and their comrade from the pro-Russian party Abramovich cannot but have a basis. Everyone supposedly knows something, but somehow they speak with great caution about gray schemes in the Tax Office. And the further the law enforcement officers put the brakes on the case of Oksana Datia, a lover of writing letters of desire, and even more so the investigation into the "Monaco battalion", the more these discussions will be taken lightly. And the worst thing in this situation is that it will continue to enrich people who may have a connection with the aggressor country.
