Did the head of Khmelnytskyi tax office, Iryna Zlenko, reinstate the Yanukovych-era schemes in the region?

After the deputies attempted to close the declarations, a loud scandal erupted, and the President vetoed the corresponding law. Thus, there is hope that we will soon see the assets of some tax officials, which they have acquired during almost two years of full-scale war. Among them is the head of the Khmelnytskyi tax officials, Iryna Zlenko.

Why her in particular? The acting head of the Main Directorate of the State Tax Service in the Khmelnytskyi region, Iryna Zlenko, caught our attention after the following message appeared in the "VIY" Telegram channel:

If this message is to be believed, Ms. Zlenko has established a large-scale scheme of extortions from entrepreneurs operating in the region. Naturally, Ms. Zlenko herself (or rather, her lawyer) denies any illegal activity. Which, in the end, is quite understandable; no one wants their name to appear in corruption scandals, especially after the published sociological data that caused such a painful reaction in the "Servant of the People" party. However, Iryna Zlenko’s lawyer seems to have overdone his efforts to rehabilitate his client.

Therefore, we have some interesting information about a civil servant of the fourth rank, the acting head of the Main Directorate of the State Tax Service in the Khmelnytskyi region, Iryna Zlenko. The most intriguing among them are the details about Ms. Zlenko’s disproportionately large assets and the schemes she has set up while working in the tax authorities since 2008. That is why it would be interesting to see Iryna Zlenko’s declaration, but unfortunately, it is currently impossible. However, some information from previous declarations, which became publicly available before their classification, is. And they are quite interesting:

This is information from almost a decade ago when Iryna Zlenko headed the Vinnytsia tax office, having moved there from Sumy. How Iryna Zlenko’s financial situation has changed over the years would be very interesting to learn from her declarations for the past two years. We’ll wait.

However, it is interesting to check other registers. Namely, the owners and beneficiaries of enterprises. And it turns out that the civil servant Iryna Zlenko owns several companies:

How this aligns with the law and whether there is a conflict of interest is a question for Ms. Tetyana Kiriyenko, who heads the State Tax Service of Ukraine. However, this fact completely destroys the legend of the "poor but honest" tax official who stands guard over the state’s interests, which Iryna Zlenko carefully creates about herself:

Thus, even a quick investigation allows us to conclude that the "VIY" Telegram channel post is, at least, worth attention. All the more so because it is far from the only one:

In this context, it is interesting to recall a decade-old scandal involving the Deputy Head of the Vinnytsia region tax office, during searches of whom several million hryvnias in cash were seized, and he was accused of setting up tax evasion schemes. Although the deputy was "caught," Iryna Zlenko was the head of the Vinnytsia region tax office at the time. Of course, she also vehemently distanced herself from the illegal actions of her combat deputy (interestingly, also from the SSU, like her husband):

What is interesting about this interview is Iryna Zlenko’s phrase “The promises that the President of Ukraine gave to voters during the elections are being fulfilled. Corruption is being eradicated from state structures.” This refers to Viktor Yanukovych, who also “eradicated corruption.” And Iryna Zlenko greatly helped him in this. The current President is also eradicating corruption. And Iryna Zlenko is helping him again. Only with the previous one, it didn’t work out well – during his whole term, Iryna Zlenko kept proving in courts that her lustration was unlawful. As we see – quite successfully.

If we return to Yanukovych, whom Iryna Zlenko so pompously mentioned in the interview after her deputy’s arrest, here is an extract from one of the materials of that period regarding her role in the schemes set up by the "Family":

It is quite understandable why Iryna Zlenko came “under attack” after “Batya” and his associates fled to Russia. And it is quite understandable why such a valuable personnel member returned to tax service after the "new faces" of the new government turned out to be a whole generation of figures from Yanukovych’s time, who in 2019 began massively returning to the Motherland and occupying high positions.

As for Iryna Zlenko herself, she was reinstated in the State Tax Service in 2021. As the press wrote – with the help of "servants" Mykola Tyshchenko and Danylo Hetmantsev. The latter, by the way, was once an assistant to the odious regional Volodymyr Sivkovych. For some time, Zlenko "jumped" from one position to another until it was decided to put the Khmelnytsky Tax Service in her hands. Where Ms. Iryna Zlenko quickly demonstrated her high professionalism, about which specialized Telegram channels and anti-corruption media write. How this will end this time is not yet known. Nor is it known what will be written in Iryna Zlenko’s declarations for the last two years of the great war, which for many of our officials has become truly manna from heaven.