Imports of base oil lawful, no grounds for seizure of goods – Soft Oil
KYIV. June 20 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Soft Oil LLC (Dnipro) imported base oil to Ukraine in line with the Ukrainian legislation, and the seizure of assets under a petition of the tax police of the main department of the State Fiscal Service (SFS) in Dnipropetrovsk region is groundless, according to lawyer of Soft Oil LLC Viacheslav Tykhovlis.
He said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine that the contract to supply 11,000 tonnes of base oil for $7 million to Ukraine was signed with Coral Energy international trader on May 10, 2019. On May 21 and May 23, two tankers with oil entered the territory of the Mykolaiv seaport. Oil was unloaded to containers at the port and the customs service took samples to test oil. According to the results of the tests issued on May 28, the goods supplied to Ukraine comply with the description in the customs declaration.
According to Soft Oil, the company managed to clear only a part of the oil in the amount of 1,800 tonnes and pay the appropriate amount of taxes in the amount of UAH 8 million (out of UAH 42 million). The rest of the products could not be cleared due to the seizure of property, the reason for which was the suspicion of the tax police in the fictitious activities of Soft Oil and tax evasion. The criminal proceedings were opened by the SFS on May 27 (on the same day, according to Soft Oil, Director of the company Kyrylo Suvorov was summoned for interrogation, information about his location has not been available since then), and the seizure of property was sanctioned on May 29.
According to Tykhovlis, the GFS' suspicion of illegal activities was based on the company's filing tax reports with zero figures for the last year. At the same time, Soft Oil said that since the company was founded and until the signing of the contract with Coral Energy, it did not carry out business activities, in accordance with which it submitted zero reports to the tax authorities.
At the same time, according to Tykhovlis, the investigator, who petitioned for the seizure of property, regarded such reports as evidence of fictitious activities and tax evasion, and the May oil batches as evidence of the company's illegal activities, which was not reflected in the tax reports.
Tykhovlis said that Soft Oil filed a number of complaints with the aim of lifting the seizure of the property, however, there are no results yet regarding the appeal of the decision.
"We are confident that the results will be positive, because there is no evidence in the proceeding materials that the company failed to settle any payments [during the oil supply period] or carried out any activity that is not reflected in the tax reporting," he said.
Commenting on the operation for the supply of oil to Ukraine, he said that the company agreed with the customer who ordered the purchase of oil on the delivery of prepaid products, while the purchase of oil by Soft Oil, according to the agreement with Coral Energy, was to be completed on post-payment terms. At the same time, Soft Oil declined to disclose the name of the customer company for fear of problems that may arise with further cooperation.
In turn, the owner of the company, Dmytro Oliynyk, who had previously said that the tax authorities had detained the director of Soft Oil Suvorov, said that according to the information provided by SFS, Suvorov is a witness, and information about his location are not available.
Soft Oil LLC was registered in July 2018. The ultimate beneficial owner is Oliynyk. The charter capital of the company is UAH 4,000. The core business is non-specialized wholesale trade, and another type of activity is wholesale trade in chemical products.