The debt of the state for the reimbursement of value added tax (VAT) for the Prometey grain trader partially for the past and this year reaches hundreds of millions of hryvnias, while now it is being reimbursed pointwise and according to nontransparent criteria, the owner of Prometey Rafael Goroyan has said.

"The state has a large debt to the Prometey company to refund VAT for a period of more than one year, since the pre-war period. We are patiently waiting for a VAT refund, but this patience may end. Now it is being reimbursed pointwise, according to incomprehensible criteria, as in the days of Yanukovych [ex-President of Ukraine], when the tax was "discounted," suitcases were brought, etc. But the Prometey company has its own principles. We have never given any bribes for VAT refunds, as this deprived us of competitiveness," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"They [the tax authorities] want to 'negotiate,' but we always swear – we don't want to 'be friends and communicate' with anyone. We don't create an 'intimate environment,' so we have a constant conflict," the head of Prometey said in the interview.

"Our principles are much more important than money. Thank God, Prometey is developing, salaries are paid to employees, and if we get dirty in corruption, we won't be washed off later," he added.

According to him, an effective way to deal with government agencies is to seek help from the media and hold actions with the participation of Prometey employees and members of their families.

"If we needed to say something loudly, we would organize large pickets near the tax office. Under the rule of Poroshenko [ex-president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko], pickets with 3,500 people from Prometey employees and members of their families were gathered, when the chief tax officer was Nasirov [former head of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine Roman Nasirov]. It was a whole revolution. I think, a month after that he was expelled and now, it seems, he is under investigation," the owner of the holding said.

"When the medium business is widely angry, everything ends badly. We should not see a situation where VAT is specifically reimbursed to someone, for no one knows what benefits," Goroyan said.

The grain trader said that for Ukrainian agro-industrial companies the issue of the actual VAT refund is not just a positive event, but a necessary condition for survival in the market.