The Security Service of Ukraine exposed the sanctioned oligarch Pavlo Fuks on large-scale financial fraud with strategic enterprises of Ukraine and systematic tax evasion.

"Based on the collected evidence, Fuks and two top managers of the holding were notified of suspicion under Part 3 of Article 27, Part 3 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (evasion of taxes, fees). Corporate rights and accounts of 101 companies involved in illegal activities, the right to claim more than 1,600 redeemed loans, more than 240 real estate and vehicles of participants in the scheme were seized as part of criminal proceedings. Part of the seized assets has already been transferred to the management of ARMA [the Asset Recovery and Management Agency]," the Security Service of Ukraine said on its website on Tuesday.

According to the Security Service, since 2018 Fuks has illegally seized the assets of Ukrainian companies for over UAH 100 billion. His holding was looking for enterprises in the energy, machine-building and metallurgical industries of Ukraine that had loans from bankrupt banks, and bought out the loan obligations of these enterprises from them, which made it possible to interfere in their economic activities. Then the assets of Ukrainian plants and infrastructure facilities were frozen, their activities were blocked, or they were brought to bankruptcy.

"Fuks and his accomplices carefully concealed the sources of financing of transactions and real customers due to complex financial fraud. For this, more than 100 affiliated commercial structures were used. During these frauds, the offenders received super profits and evaded taxes. For example, only from one of these transactions the amount of damage inflicted on the state reaches almost UAH 100 million.