How buying contraband enriches customs officials and contributes to corruption in Ukraine

How buying contraband enriches customs officials and contributes to corruption in Ukraine

Has everyone watched the “Scheme” investigation into the condition of ex-Deputy Chairman of Customs Ruslan Cherkasskyi?

Have you looked?
Now look carefully at your mobile phone on which you watched this investigation.

And if you have an iPhone in your hands, then with a high probability it was purchased at some store like estore, or mrfix, or some kind of “Yabko”.
And with a high probability you bought it for cash, because these stores offer the best price for cash.

But even if you paid for it on an individual entrepreneur card, then with 100% probability, your gadget was smuggled into Ukraine, and a share of your cache went to a bribe to customs.

And if you haven’t guessed what’s next in the chain, then congratulations!
In all of Cherkasskyi’s real estate worth $25 million, there is your small but important contribution, which you make when you purchase smuggled goods, explaining to yourself that “it’s cheaper this way.”

Even if you bought yourself not an iPhone, but something else, like Xiaomi in Citrus or ALLO, you are also in this scheme, because a bribe to customs officers, security forces and tax officials is not taken out of the blue.

This is your money.
and it is they, together with your actions, that make them all richer and you poorer.

And until we realize all this, until we change our attitude towards all this, we will live the way we live now.