Titan Machinery Ukraine: What is hidden behind the glossy facade?

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Titan Machinery Ukraine – the Ukrainian division of an international corporation trading equipment from leading global manufacturers. Its clients are the largest Ukrainian agricultural holdings and companies.

Titan Machinery Ukraine positions itself as a reliable technological partner for the Ukrainian farmer, a pillar of the emerging rural bourgeoisie in our country.

At the same time, the image of a “responsible business” is carefully built – specialized publications constantly feature materials about supplying equipment to Ukraine amid the war, supporting Ukrainian agricultural producers, and so on. In addition, back at the beginning of 2022, the company publicly declared its support for Ukraine, the evacuation of employees, and the gradual resumption of operations after the full-scale invasion began.

In general, it is an ordinary large representative of big international business that cares about its reputation in the country where it operates. However, it unexpectedly turned out that quite unattractive things are hidden behind the respectable facade.

Tax deception

The “Pandora’s box” was opened by an ordinary report on a court hearing – it concerned an attempt to evade paying customs duties in the amount of 845 thousand hryvnias. The amount, for such a powerful corporation, is frankly paltry. But for a country at war, where people die and houses are destroyed every day, every hryvnia counts.

The essence of the case is as follows. According to the decision of the Shevchenkivskyi District Court of Kyiv, the customs clearance agent of LLC “Titen Machinery Ukraine” Andriy Stovbetskyi was found guilty under Article 485 of the Customs Code of Ukraine.

It involved the import of two KUHN Axent 90.1 fertilizer spreaders. During declaration, a commodity classification was used that allowed the application of a zero duty rate. The customs office considered the classification incorrect: in its position, the equipment should have been classified as a trailer with a 10% duty. The difference amounted to 845,736 hryvnias, of which about 704.7 thousand hryvnias were duty and 140.9 thousand hryvnias were VAT.

The court found Stovbetskyi guilty and imposed a fine of 422,868 hryvnias on him, i.e., 50% of the payments that, according to the case, they attempted not to pay.

Yes, it must be acknowledged and emphasized – the court fined a specific agent, not Titan Machinery Ukraine itself. Therefore, from a purely formal point of view, it cannot be claimed that “Titan Machinery evaded paying customs duties.”

Of course, on the one hand, the attempt by the customs agent, who was made the scapegoat in this story, to save his client several thousand dollars is quite understandable – no one likes paying taxes, including Americans.

But, on the other hand – in fact, Titan Machinery Ukraine stole this money from the state. Even if not personally – the tax agent acted in the company’s interests. And he cheated with the documents. Of course, Titan Machinery Ukraine distanced itself from the agent’s actions, but it raises doubts that the tax agent was so selfless and, on purely altruistic grounds, cared about the company’s wallet.

Hundreds of lawsuits and millions in debts

This seemingly ordinary episode opened a real “Pandora’s box” – it turned out that Titan Machinery Ukraine is simply drowning in lawsuits.

Yes, we are not talking about tax or customs manipulations. But – about money. And very large amounts. Here, too, there would be nothing surprising – after all, Titan Machinery Ukraine does not trade carrots at the market; it supplies very expensive equipment, which, accordingly, costs a lot of money.

But the structure of the court cases in which Titan Machinery Ukraine is drowning (and there are over three hundred of them) is quite interesting. And it suggests that the protection of the company’s interests is carried out in an overly zealous manner. And this is putting it very mildly.

One of the illustrative examples is the bankruptcy of LLC “Agrarian Company ‘Deniva’”. Titan Machinery filed claims against the enterprise for millions of hryvnias. The case materials mention the amount of 7.7 million hryvnias, including 6.01 million hryvnias of principal debt, 1.065 million hryvnias of penalty, and 620.7 thousand hryvnias of annual interest. But that is normal; debts must be paid.

What is abnormal is what happened next – Titan Machinery tried to recover this money not only from the bankrupt. The company demanded that joint and several liability be imposed on the director of “Deniva” Yevhen Moroz, that he be recognized as a personal debtor, and that his property be seized – including a share in an apartment, a land plot, and a car.

Fortunately for the latter, the court refused to satisfy these claims. Thus, it was documented not that the director personally owed Titan Machinery 7.7 million hryvnias, but that the company attempted to achieve his personal liability for the debt of the enterprise he managed.

If Yevhen Moroz, in Titan Machinery’s opinion, misappropriated this money, then a complaint should be filed with the police regarding fraud. But if the enterprise he managed, having purchased equipment from Titan Machinery, for some reason went bankrupt, then there is no question of any fraud. And Moroz cannot be held personally liable with his own property for the enterprise’s debts. Maybe this seems illogical to someone, but that is the law. And Titan Machinery should have known it.

The attempt to recover the debt from the head of the bankrupt enterprise indicates that Titan Machinery is trying to interpret the legislation of the country of operation, i.e., Ukraine, in the most favorable way for itself. Interestingly – do they operate the same way in the USA? Or can one suffer for such tricks under Uncle Sam?

There is another illustrative court case – case No. 922/2764/19. Which Titan Machinery lost due to its own negligence.

In case No. 922/2764/19, the company demanded 2.738 million hryvnias from LLC “Agroprodservice” for agricultural equipment, including 1.379 million hryvnias of principal debt, penalties, and interest. The first instance almost fully agreed with the claims and awarded Titan Machinery 2.53 million hryvnias.

However, the appellate court overturned this decision and completely denied the company’s claim. The reason turned out to be quite strange for such a serious corporation: the court considered that Titan Machinery had not proven the proper transfer of the goods to the buyer. The company appealed to the Supreme Court, but lost there as well — on December 3, 2020, the Supreme Court upheld the denial.

The court established that Titan Machinery had not proven the proper transfer of equipment to the buyer under the sales contract. In particular, there was no evidence of the execution of an acceptance-transfer act, deregistration of the equipment, and other actions confirming the seller’s fulfillment of the obligation to transfer the goods.

Here there is clear incompetence of the persons who sold the equipment to the buyer. This is at least. At most – it could be a criminal offense, but since no relevant statements were made to law enforcement agencies, there was no fact of a crime.

However, in such a case, the competence of Titan Machinery’s top management raises surprise, since someone signed the contract for the supply of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And this person is clearly inside the company.

But no one tried to recover the debt of two and a half million from him, as they tried to do with “Deniva.” And here we move on to another interesting case – what is happening inside Titan Machinery, what is carefully hidden from the public.

Disorder inside Titan Machinery

The lost lawsuits and lost money of Titan Machinery are the result of its employees’ activities. The Ukrainian company is part of the American Titan Machinery Inc. group, whose shares are traded on NASDAQ. In Ukraine, the general director is listed as Heiko Andreas Kreisel, who, according to registry data, headed Titan Machinery Ukraine in 2021.

There were no public scandals during his tenure, but the following publication on one of the review sites is of interest: “There is a well-known saying: employees leave not the company, but a bad manager – in my case, everything happened the same way… I decided to resign due to a sharp decline in morale among the top management of TMU, with which neither my upbringing nor my values allow me to coexist…”.

This could be attributed to the natural dissatisfaction of an employee who was fired, were it not for several factors – a review of this letter from another company employee, who writes “well, now, probably, the navigation department’s f***ing is coming… The guys seemed to be working normally, who could this have bothered? And all because of someone’s stupidity…”. And reviews about the atmosphere inside Titan Machinery Ukraine on another site:

Pay attention to the underlined: “Ambiguous management policy regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war” and “It felt as if I were dealing with Muscovite chauvinists.” These are reviews from two completely different people. One – from inside the company, the other – from outside. But their conclusion is strikingly the same.

Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that the current head of Titan Machinery Ukraine, Heiko Andreas Kreisel, worked in Russia for a long time; perhaps the reasons are different. But the fact remains – contrary to Titan Machinery Ukraine’s public statements regarding the Russian-Ukrainian war, inside the company itself, everything is far from unambiguous.

Finances and court statistics

However, it is not worth speculating on the attitude toward the war – after all, the public position is clearly pro-Ukrainian. It is better to pay attention to the figures that cannot be interpreted ambiguously.

In 2025, Titan Machinery Ukraine reported revenue of 3.048 billion hryvnias and a net profit of 103.7 million hryvnias.

It would seem – “prestige is strengthening, growing powerfully,” as the classic wrote. However, as is known, “the devil is in the details”: the reporting shows another important feature.

At the end of 2024, the company had almost 816 million hryvnias in outstanding loans from related parties, denominated in US dollars. Another about 108 million hryvnias were accrued interest payable. That is, behind a billion turnover stands a business that significantly uses intra-group financing.

This is especially important for an importer of agricultural machinery: the purchase of machines requires large working capital, and revenue depends on how quickly farmers pay for the purchased equipment.

And here, court statistics and financial reporting form a single picture. Titan Machinery sells expensive equipment on credit or with deferred payment, itself uses borrowed funds, and then, in case of client non-payment, goes to court.

What is really hidden behind the facade?

While the documents found do not provide grounds to call Titan Machinery a corruption scheme or claim that the company itself committed a customs crime. But they show three quite non-advertising facts.

First: the company has a large court trail, a significant part of which is related to debt collection from clients.

Second: the business heavily relies on borrowed and intra-group financing — almost 816 million hryvnias in related dollar loans appeared in the reporting at the end of 2024.

Third: in 2026, the court found Titan Machinery’s customs clearance agent guilty of actions aimed at unlawfully reducing customs payments by more than 845 thousand hryvnias.

Therefore, the main question to “Titen Machinery Ukraine” today sounds not as an accusation, but as a quite specific journalistic inquiry: how much money does the company actually lose on client non-payments, how much does it manage to recover through courts, and how much in taxes and customs duties is actually paid during the import of equipment?

It is the answers to these questions that can show the true economy of the business much better than any corporate presentations.