United Tobacco shut down for making counterfeit cigarettes.
The biggest producer of fake cigarettes in Ukraine has stopped operating. According to Daniil Getmantsev, the head of the Verkhovna Rada Finance Committee, during the war, the company avoided paying over 5 billion hryvnia excise tax to the state budget. The company in question might be United Tobacco, which has been suspected of producing counterfeit products, as reported by Obozrevatel.
The SBU's search of the factory lasted over 2 months, during which the criminals tried to delay the investigators' actions. However, these methods no longer work in the new Ukraine. A large semi-legal tobacco factory has finally ceased to exist, the MP announced on Telegram.
Additionally, the MP emphasized that the company's seven modern cigarette production lines have been dismantled. Two more lines, which were brought into Ukraine by the criminals but not installed in time, will be located and seized soon.
Since 2015, the factory has been a symbol of Ukrainian corruption, flooding the market with excise-free tobacco with the tacit approval of law enforcement officers who turned a blind eye to the operations of the influential enterprise. During the war alone, the perpetrators avoided paying over 5 billion hryvnias of excise tax to the state budget, Hetmantsev stated.
Information about United Tobacco's involvement in cigarette counterfeiting.
The company, known for producing PULL and Marshall cigarettes, has been repeatedly suspected of making counterfeit products. For instance:
- In 2021, authorities conducted searches and questioned 90 tonnes of tobacco products without excise stamps.
- In 2018, an investigation by journalists from the Schemes program revealed that only one out of 8 packs of United Tobacco cigarettes had the original excise stamp attached to it, according to an expert examination.
- In June 2021, journalists from Channel 5 ordered a second examination, which showed that 8 out of 11 packets of cigarettes manufactured in Zheltiye Vody had fake excise stamps affixed to them.
According to YouControl, Vyacheslav Vershuta is the director of United Tobacco. SENTROTREYD LIMITED, an offshore company registered in the Marshall Islands, is the founder of United Tobacco.
The ultimate beneficiary of United Tobacco is listed as Yelena Boyko, a resident of Zheltiye Vody. According to Bihus, she used to be a business partner of Ruslan Zhurilo, and the cigarette production facility is located at the former Electron instrument factory, where Zhurilo used to be a director.
According to OBOZREVATEL, the Bureau of Economic Security (BES) previously uncovered the illegal production of well-known brands of cigarettes in the Odessa region. The total value of the tobacco products and equipment was UAH 150 million, and the estimated monthly loss from the detected illicit manufacturers not paying taxes was UAH 90 million.
Authorities spent 2 weeks trying to seize the equipment of the illegal Zhurilo-Martynenko tobacco factory in Zheltiye Vody.
The license of United Tobacco, which is said to be the biggest producer of counterfeit cigarettes, has been revoked.
