The State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) has established involvement of employees of customs offices in an illegal scheme with tax credits, and currently seven sites of customs offices of the State Fiscal Service (SFS) of Ukraine and customs checkpoints are being raided, First Deputy SBI Director Olha Varchenko has said.

"There is fresh information regarding searches in the territorial office of the State Fiscal Service of the Volyn region. During the investigation, the involvement of customs officers in the illegal scheme was established... Right now, SBI investigators are raiding seven sites of SFS customs, customs posts and customs clearance departments," Varchenko wrote on her Facebook page on Monday.

She recalled that early July, investigators of the Central Office of the SBI revealed an illicit scheme in which employees of the State Fiscal Service took direct part. "They covered the activities of the shadow market in tax credit trading and received their interest for such "services." As a result, the activities of this transit-conversion group with the assistance of Volyn tax authorities caused a damage of UAH 190 million to the state," Varchenko said, giving the details.

According to her, the role of customs officers was that they deliberately underestimated the customs value of vehicles that were imported using forged documents: they indicated inaccurate information about the sender and recipient, as well as manipulated the information necessary to determine an adequate customs value.

Criminal proceedings are investigated under Part 3 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (evasion of taxes, fees or other compulsory payments), Part 1 of Article 358 (Forgery of documents, stamps, seals or letterheads, and sale or use of forged documents), Part 4 of Article 358 (use of a deliberately forged documents), Part 2 of Article 364 (abuse of authority or office that caused any grave consequences), and Part 2 of Article 366 (Forgery in office that caused any grave consequences).