It would have been a regular Tuesday night, had it not been for a late phone call. The man was polite and (relatively) calm. He introduced himself clearly, and told me he was a lawyer.
He said his client, who owned a door making company, is being questioned by the tax police in his own office, behind closed doors and no lawyers are allowed in.
He said the officers failed to give their names, and mumbled that they come within a framework of an investigation into a different company suspected of money laundering, which had a deal of some sort with the door makers.
The tax police were threatening to confiscate computer servers and drive the company director and accountant to Chernihiv for questioning against their will and in the depth of the night. Needless to say, this procedure would have nothing in common with law.
The lawyer was asking for help, and saying “If you keep silent, it will be a repeat of 1937 repressions.” I couldn’t do much at the time, but posted a notice on Facebook, tagging a few parliament deputies, asking them to make a few phone calls to clear up the matter.
After decriminalization of many economic misdeeds, the tax police should have become redundant. Instead, they continue working and exercising their rough methods to extract money from businesses. (ru.tsn.ua)
Their status often helps in cases like these. The post was reprinted on several sites specializing in crime and raidership issues.
In the middle of the night, the company director was handcuffed, pushed into a car and driven off to the tax police department of the city of Chernihiv.
The regular police officers in Kyiv, called in by the lawyers, could not stop them.
The businessman was questioned through the morning, and by noon his lawyer received a phone call with an invitation to come in as well. By that time, two people’s deputies, one from the Party of Regions and another from the opposition, agreed to investigate the case and write petitions, and were waiting for phone calls and more details on the case.
But it turned out that none of it was needed. The hours spent in the company of tax police officers were enough to persuade the business owner to cough up Hr 1.2 million to the state budget to pay off the alleged damage to the state.
In exchange, the tax police would not freeze the company accounts and allow the business to operate as usual, and eventually close the criminal case through court.
Three weeks on, the company has paid, but the case is still waiting to be closed. The businessman is sitting quietly, and there is no proof that the whole operation under question (or the partner company that had initially been under investigation) was flawed.
Despite the fact that the detention of the businessman and many consequent actions took place with major violations of the criminal procedural code, the company director does not even want to even file a complaint to the prosecutors to check on the legality of the operation, fearing the loss of his business in case his accounts are frozen and more cases are rolled out against him.
The macroeconomic situation aside, the tax police fear they might become extinct as a result of decriminalization of many economic misdeeds, making their tactics and their very existence obsolete.
His logic is that raising a stink or going to court can stretch on for years, and gives him no guarantees of winning. He might also lose a business in the process, or have it badly damaged.
Although his fear is understandable, the businessman’s actions are fundamentally flawed, in my opinion. They lead to cementing the existing system, by which the tax police feel like any means are justified as long as they bring that extra money to the state coffers.
The tax police are also feeling unaccountable to anyone. By the morning when the businessman capitulated, they knew he was putting up a fight, they showed him printouts of Facebook posts and news items detailing out his case, and they knew two deputies are standing by to provide help.
But they still managed to bully the businessman into silence.
The businessman, however, has cried wolf once, and might not get the same readiness next time from the press and the deputies to help him out. In the meantime, the tax police might decide to come again, to another one of his hypothetical companies to milk for another million for an unproven crime.
And I have no doubt that they will. The macroeconomic situation aside, the tax police fear they might become extinct as a result of decriminalization of many economic misdeeds, making their tactics and their very existence obsolete.
But if it takes them about 12 hours shake someone down for a million for the budget through bullying, then their services will continue to be in great demand.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
