In a TV interview the leader of the "Front for Change"political party, Arseniy Yatseniuk declared that the opposition will demand a new parliamentary commission be set up to investigate the scandal-ridden "Livela" and its related companies.
"..These companies did not pay any taxes, and imported goods duty-free into the territory of Ukraine goods, illegally utilising various schemes. And they did this, of course, under the [protective] roof of law enforcement agencies and the government ", said Yatseniuk.
He noted that the temporary parliamentary committee of inquiry established by himself and by the chairman NUNS, has collected a large quantity of material, confirming the involvement of government officials in the allegedly illegal activities of "Livela." "We dug up so much material that there is enought not just for article 365, for which Tymoshenko was locked up, there's enough there for two dozen such articles."
"There are sufficient documents for the Security Service and Prosecutor General's Office to immediately open criminal cases," he added.
"Livela" failed to pay 2.9 billion hryvnias, [$360million]. However, its affiliates omitted to pay 8 billion hryvnia [$1billion] of taxes. These 11 billion were not paid because "honest" Ukrainian courts approved their exemption," he claimed.
"11 billion - enough not to have to raise the retirement age, or to rebuild an entire network for new children's nurseries and village health centres in the country," said the leader of the "Front for Change".
He said he had demanded the names of people linked to Livela's' activities from the parliamentary investigative commission.
"Journalistic investigations in "Ukrainska Pravda" and television channel TVi exposed two names - Volodymyr Zubyk, a PoR deputy, and first deputy prime minister Andriy Klyuyev. I turned up at the commission meeting and they voted to summon Klyuyev and Zubyk to the commission. But when specific names of specific people began to appear, Party of Regions' refused to vote for prolonging the activities of the commission."
Arseniy Yatseniuk said that some of the judges who carried out the decisions [to grant tax immunity], have since died. We need to determine under what circumstances they died, and what happened to the people who carried out these decisions, he added.
He noted that the government wants to hide the names of those involved - to bury the "Livela" case. "We will not let them do it", - said Yatseniuk.
On November 18, the pro-government majority in parliament did not support the continuation of the temporary investigatve commission's activities in the investigation of "Livela." The head of the commission, deputy Roman Zvarych, was interviewed by 'Radio Svoboda' last week. He said the country's law enforcement agencies had turned away their complaints and queries.
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This is such a big case, so much money involved, paper trails all over the place, it will not go away ..and even a hint of "mokryye delà"...
p.s Video in Ukrainian here
An audit of there assetts and income should show up any decrpancies in income and they would have top p[ay full value on any stock held as teh receipts will not tax any import dutites paid. The other think the government could do is insist that any items over a nominated value must be paid for via a electronic credit/debit process which should also include any serial or transaction identification in order to demonstrate ownership. This would not only add to the liquidity of Ukrainian banks but would allow Ukraine to charge a transaction tax. Ukraine should also consider a mining tax to allow it to gain more revenue from the current mining boom.
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