Prosecutors of the Office of the Attorney General have reported suspicions against the former director and the former chief accountant of a Ukrainian airline company, linked to a well-known Ukrainian businessman, for deliberately evading tax payments amounting to over 344 million UAH, that is, in particularly large amounts, and for providing knowingly false information in tax reporting (Part 3 of Article 212, Part 2 of Article 28, Part 1 of Article 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

A pre-trial investigation is ongoing, conducted by detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine with operational support from the Security Service of Ukraine. Investigative (search) and other procedural actions are being carried out to establish other accomplices.

What is known so far:

– contracts for operational leasing regarding the rental of Boeing 737 and Embraer aircraft have been concluded between a Cypriot company (the owner of the aircraft) and the Ukrainian airline company;

– in fulfillment of these contracts, during the period from 2017 to 2022, the Ukrainian company made payments to the Cypriot company in the form of leasing fees for the use of the aircraft totaling over 3.4 billion UAH;

– taking advantage of the Convention between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of the Republic of Cyprus on the avoidance of double taxation, the former management of the Ukrainian company applied a preferential rate of 0% when making these payments and did not pay a single hryvnia to the Ukrainian budget;

– during the investigation, it was established that the application of the preferential rate by the former management of the Ukrainian company did not correspond to either the terms of the concluded contracts or the actual circumstances of the operation of the aircraft.

That is, the airline was supposed to apply a rate of 10%, but applied a preferential rate of 0%. This led to the actual non-receipt of over 344 million UAH into the state budget.

Earlier, within the framework of this criminal proceeding, at the request of the prosecutors, the court imposed a seizure on 7 Boeing 737 and Embraer E 190 aircraft that were the subject of leasing under the specified contracts.

Note: according to Article 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine, a person is considered innocent of committing a crime and cannot be subjected to criminal punishment until their guilt is proven in a lawful manner and established by a guilty verdict of the court.