In Ukraine, they exposed a scheme that allows you to export soybean under the guise of soybean, avoiding taxes. According to the investigative journalist Yevgeny Plinsky, this fraud was made possible by the changes that the Ukrainian government has introduced.
The essence of the scheme is that the raw material is exported outside the country not as a grain culture (which provides 14% of the tax on export), but as a processing product - soy meal. Since the meal is not officially charged, it can be exported without tax restrictions and even without the origin documents.
According to Plinsky, the key role in this Lazivka played the government - it was he who excluded the meal from the list of goods that the export regime applies. As a result of the exports of the meal increased rapidly. However, the scheme became publicly known only after in March 2025, Romanian customs detained 32 carriages with Soybean, which was declared as a meal.
According to the journalist, one of the key links of the scheme is the company "Platinum Logistics", which, after the start of the scandal on April 1, urgently changed the name to LLC "YUDK". The founders of these structures are Igor Kizima and Vyacheslav Zhukov, who are involved in many companies related to shadow export operations.
Schematically the fraud looks like this:
- intermediaries buy soybeans from farmers at cash and dumping prices;
- the grain is transported to Chernivtsi and transmitted to the "scheme operators", also for cash;
- Platinum Logistics Company organizes transshipment into wagons and hires the carrier;
-simultaneously fictitious documents are formed through one-day firms, in particular Lapter Group, which states that the load is not grain, but a meal.
According to the journalist, the customs officer does not obstruct - wagons go to processing enterprises in the EU. There they are unloaded, and the calculation for the "Ukrainian meal" is made in currency through offshore jurisdictions - without tax control by Ukraine.
It is worth noting that such schemes not only lead to direct budget losses, but also create unequal conditions for legal exports and reduce the country's reputation in foreign markets.
