Eleonora Shkoda, a friend of the "shadowy" officials, will be in charge of the tax service of Dnipropetrovs’k region
A few weeks ago, one of the co-founders of Monobank, Oleg Gorokhovsky, wrote on his social media that he had to change his place of residence from Dnipro to Mykolaiv. This was facilitated by the constant close attention of the Dnipro Tax Office, which often resembled pressure and actually forced the businessman to decide to change the place of payment of taxes. By coincidence, Eleonora Shkoda was recently appointed acting Chief Directorate of the State Tax Service in the Dnipropetrovsk region. And judging by media reports, with this appointment in one of the regions most heavily targeted by the occupiers, tax pressure can only intensify.
Eleonora Shkoda is an experienced tax officer. At first she worked in Donetsk region, then transferred to Zaporizhzhya region, and in 2023 received a "fat" position of the Director of the Department of Excise Control in Kyiv. For the reader’s understanding, it should be explained that this department is one of the most profitable, as it closely "cooperates" (in the case of Eleonora Shkoda, too closely) with grey market players.
Excisable goods are tobacco, alcohol and petrol. According to expert statistics, the share of illegal tobacco products in the total volume in Ukraine over the past year has reached 20%, which is an absolute record. "The tax losses of the State Budget of Ukraine in 2023 from the illegal tobacco market are estimated at UAH 22 billion," says Kantar Ukraine.
The situation with illegal alcohol is no better. According to research by the Economic Expert Platform, the share of shadow products in the alcohol market was 31% in the first quarter of 2023.
According to media reports, it was the shadow players who recruited tax officer Eleonora Shkoda and facilitated her transfer from the State Tax Service in Zaporizhzhya to a lucrative position in Kyiv. The goal was to "properly" control grey markets.
Photo from Eleonora Shkoda’s private Facebook profile
Eleonora Shkoda’s husband also works at the Tax Service. Serhiy Shkoda is the chief state auditor-inspector of the Legal Entity Inspection Division of the Scheduled Inspections Division of the Tax Audit Department. In fact, he is also involved in "nightmarising" businesses.
Although the couple’s declarations are rather modest, they contain some interesting nuances. For example, in 2016, Eleonora Shkoda became the owner of an apartment in Donetsk. And this was at a time when the city had been under the control of separatists from the so-called "Donetsk People’s Republic" for about two years. That is, the Ukrainian tax officer had to pay for this apartment to the budget of the quasi-state formation. This could well be considered financing of separatism, which is a criminal offence.
In 2018, the Shkoda couple purchased an apartment in Zaporizhzhya, where they worked at the time. According to Eleonora Shkoda’s declaration, the cost of the apartment was 461,000 hryvnia, which is equivalent to $15,000 at the 2018 exchange rate. It’s hard to imagine that in pre-war times an apartment in Zaporizhzhya could cost so much. After all, for example, now, when the region is shelled every day, in the same complex where the Shkodas lived, similar real estate costs $35,000.
However, when Eleonora Shkoda moved to a "fat" position in Kyiv, she sold her apartment in Zaporizhzhya and bought a house in Sofiyivska Borshchahivka near Kyiv. This happened in August 2023, a few months after she was quietly fired after searches in the tax offices of Kyiv and the region. These are the same legendary searches during which Oksana Datiy, the head of the Kyiv State Tax Service, was found to have a "wish list" of fur coats, holidays and a million dollars.
And the very juice of the declarations of Eleonora Shkoda, a long-time employee of the Tax Service, is the declared winnings at online casinos. In 2021, the woman received UAH 41,000 from GameDev LLC, and in 2023 - UAH 10,000 from the Pari-Match gambling company. And here it is interesting, because in 2023, sanctions were imposed against Pari-Match and the company had to stop operating in Ukraine.
Now, Eleonora Shkoda has been appointed acting head of the State Tax Service in the Dnipro region. It can be assumed that the previously mentioned grey business gatekeepers are also behind this. The fact is that Dnipropetrovs’k region is a leader among all regions of Ukraine in the distribution of illegal tobacco and alcohol products. According to experts, the region’s share reaches 14%. For those who are very closely involved in illegal flows, a person in the tax office of such a region is extremely necessary.
Eleonora Shkoda was present at the presentation of research on the level of illegal production in Ukraine in May 2023, where information on the Dnipro region was presented. Back then, she was the director of the Department of Excise Control in Kyiv. Obviously, she could have told the visitors a lot of interesting things about the level of the grey market. However, she was most likely sent there as a listener to take notes on what the experts had found.
The tax service in Ukraine is one of the most corrupt bodies. Only the judiciary can compete with it. The situation is not changing because reforms are not being implemented. The State Tax Service remains dependent on cash from all sorts of "shadowy" people thanks to strange reappointments of people like Eleonora Shkoda, who are talked about and known in the market, but difficult to get rid of.
Author: Olena Dobrodiy
25 March 2024 ã., 19:04
