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Tax police fire on workers, wounding four.

Masked and armed Ukrainian tax police on Sept. 24 fired guns using rubber bullets at workers of an agricultural enterprise in Berdyansk, a port city in Zaporizhia Oblast, injuring four.

A similar incident took place five days later in Kherson, leaving a mayoral candidate hospitalized.

The violence in Berdyansk started at 9 a.m. as plant employees arrived at work. At least four workers were wounded, two seriously enough to be hospitalized. The region’s top tax official was quick to defend the actions of his subordinates as self-defense, accusing workers of attacking the tax police.

However, eyewitness accounts and video of the incident posted on YouTube contradict the official version of events that workers fired first on police. The six-minute, 31-second clip has since become the latest Ukrainian YouTube sensation, with more than 90,000 hits since it was posted on Sept. 24.

The video shows eight young tax police officers wearing face-covering masks and bulletproof vests blocking workers from their offices. The workers are unarmed in the clip.

“What happened is a glaring example of the socially dangerous behavior exhibited by the nation’s tax police”.

– Syatoslav Olyinyk, a parliament deputy from the opposition Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko.

Syatoslav Olyinyk, a parliament deputy from the opposition Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko, appealed to President Viktor Yanukovych and the Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko to intervene.

“What happened is a glaring example of the socially dangerous behavior exhibited by the nation’s tax police. No one can feel safe in a country where tax agents wearing masks are shooting unarmed civilians,” Olyinyk said. “The mere fact that tax policemen opened fire out in the middle of street is outrageous. This altercation shows the need to either replace those who head the country’s tax police, or to eliminate this law enforcement agency altogether.”

Armed tax police officers in Berdyansk stand behind Andriy Shevchenko, deputy chief of the Berdyansk tax authority, during a Sept. 24 raid on a business there. Officers shot four workers, injuring two seriously enough to be hospitalized, during the confrontation. Eyewitnesses said the workers were unarmed and did not provoke the assault. (Alexey Kalinin/Courtesy of Berdyanskie Novosti newspaper)

“Tax police were forced to return fire using rubber bullets to restore order.”

– Viktor Yashchenko, head of Zaporozhia Oblast’s tax police directorate.

The official version is this: Tax agents and tax police were deployed to a Berdyansk agricultural enterprise early on Sept. 24 to seize documents related to a criminal case when they were met by armed men demanding entry to the premises.

“Some of these men carried cameras,” Viktor Yashchenko, head of Zaporozhia Oblast’s tax police directorate, told journalists on Sept. 27. “Others carried automatic weapons, and one of the men began shooting from a gas pistol. Tax police were forced to return fire using rubber bullets to restore order.”

Video footage of the incident shows only tax agents carrying pistols and automatic weapons. Eyewitnesses to the melee, which took place on a 12-hectare plot occupied by some 20 enterprises, say it was tax police who fired on workers and not the other way around.

Local journalists covering the story said a special detachment of armed tax police were deployed from Zaporizhia to Berdyansk to carry out the raid, which was supervised by a local tax inspector.

Valeriya Bukhanova, a journalist with weekly newspaper Berdyanskie Vedomosti, said most of the two dozen or so enterprises located in the compound process and store various types of motor oils.

“Nothing like this has ever happened in Berdyansk before,” Bukhanov told the Kyiv Post on Sept. 28.

 

Vladlen Hiryn, a candidate for Kherson mayor, was hospitalized on Sept. 29 when a squad of tax police officers raided businesses allegedly tied to him. Supporters said Sept. 30 that the raid was an attempt to prevent Hiryn from running for mayor in the Oct. 31 election. (UNIAN)

But it did happen again, on Sept. 29, this time in Kherson, where a raid by a dozen tax police officers on an enterprise resulted in the hospitalization of mayoral candidate Vladlen Hiryn.

Hiryn and several enterprise workers attempted to repel the law enforcement agents, saying the police action was illegal and aimed at preventing Hiryn from running for political office. Hiryn received wounds to the face and shoulder during the tussle and was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Collecting taxes has been a police function in Ukraine since the late 1990s, when the agency under former tax chief Mykola Azarov (1996-2001), now the nation’s prime minister, was accused of harassing entrepreneurs and companies with ties to opposition leaders.

Tax police, who are subordinate to the State Tax Administration, seek out and arrest individuals who avoid paying taxes and businesses which neglect reporting to tax authorities.

Kyiv Post staff writer Peter Byrne can be reached at [email protected].