You're reading: Customs Service charges anti-AIDS group Hr 3.3 million for syringes

In Ukraine, a nation with one of the highest rates of HIV infection in Europe, the International HIV/AIDS Alliance in Ukraine says it’s having trouble importing syringes.

The anti-dumping
customs fee for importing syringes, established under pressure from local
syringe producers, hit hard the anti-AIDS nongovernmental organization hard.
The newly established Ministry of Taxes and Fees demands that the group pay Hr
3.3 million retroactively — for syringes imported from a Spanish company more
than two years ago.

The controversy
started when, in 2009, the fee was established and immediately suspended as a
group of commercial syringe importers challenged it in court. In 2010, with the
fee suspended, the HIV/AIDS Alliance bought 11.6 million syringes for 2011.
Syringes were purchased for $0.05-0.08 each and were imported free of customs
duties.

But when
in January 2012 the anti-dumping court battle was won by local pharmaceutical
companies and the fee was back in force, customs officials demanded that the alliance
pay the extra fee for the 2010 syringes.

However, the group
argues that the anti-dumping fee is meant for products that are for sale, while
syringes purchased by anti-AIDS group are given away to drug addicts in order
to prevent them from using one syringe multiple times to minimize risk of acquiring
and spreading HIV.

According to Iryna
Malykh, the purchase manager of the alliance, the foundation reaches about
160,000 intravenous drug users. They get 120 syringes per year, and the number
is planned to be increased to 200. But now, with the antidumping fee, nothing
can be promised. Purchasing syringes produced in Ukraine is hardly an option,
since their quality is unsatisfactory.

“The alliance gets
money from the Global Fund. I don’t think that its sponsors, governments of the
participant countries, will spend money paying the fee for our Customs
Service,” Malykh says. 

According to alliance
representatives, the Global Fund’s agreement with Ukraine states that the projects
sponsored by the fund shouldn’t be taxed by Ukraine. The head of Ukraine’s
Alliance, Andriy Klepikov, is sure that violation of this rule will prompt the Global
Fund to suspend his programs in Ukraine. That will hurt not only HIV patients.
Government projects for fighting tuberculosis, the disease that has the status
of epidemic in Ukraine, could be in danger too.

“You know what
Ukraine government is doing to prevent HIV? Nothing at all,” says Klepikov. “If
our syringe program will be stopped, that will no doubt cause a new wave of HIV
and AIDS.”

The Kyiv Customs
Service insists that that nongovernmental group pay the fee, despite having no
proof that the alliance makes money from the syringes.

“We have
a right to make post-audit control of companies during three years after their
transactions,” says Hennadiy Romanenko, the head of the Kyiv Customs Service. “The
alliance made a commercial purchase that wasn’t specified as humanitarian
relief, so they must pay the fee.”

According to
Klepikov, the alliance didn’t certify the syringes as a humanitarian relief,
but only because it was not required. “The syringes were imported legally, and
were checked by customs, and had a stamp saying ‘zero fee’ on them,” he claims.

Alliance
representatives say they will challenge the enormous fee in court. They called customs’
actions extortion, saying that the “antidumping fee” is a new fancy word for
racket.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olga Rudenko can be
reached at [email protected].