All Ukraine’s television channels announced that last Thursday that representatives of the international organization Reporters Sans Frontieres were received by President Leonid Kuchma, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Yevhen Marchuk, Minister of Internal Affairs Kravchenko, and Director of the Security Service Derkach. The visitors also met chairman of the State Tax Administration of Ukraine (STAU) Mykola Azarov, which is especially important for all those in the media business in Ukraine and know very well how often tax authorities are in the focus of conflicts between the authorities and the press.
Mr. Azarov noted that tax official assumes the same attitude toward all media outlets irrespective of their content or political stand. According to the STAU head, none of the 60,000 tax inspectors can say he/she has been ordered to carry out an examination only because somebody does not like the political leanings of a newspaper or television station. Mr. Azarov disclosed that his office had carried out 843 inspections of 6030 registered media units in 1999-2000. About 6% of the mass media were annually inspected, Interfax-Ukraine reports. Other economic areas had the same share of inspected units. 3/4 of the inspections were scheduled, while others were accomplished for certain law enforcement reasons. Violations of the tax law were found in 706 cases. In only 41 cases taxpayers did resort appeal the tax authorities’ decisions. The STAU head especially pointed out that Ukraine has a multilevel system of tax appeal. He also informed the Reporters Sans Frontieres mission that in 2001 the tax service “will take new steps to establish a partnership relations with taxpayers, to further encourage them to pay taxes voluntarily and on time,” Interfax-Ukraine quotes the STAU press service as saying. In particular, they are going to publish an excerpt from the media documentary inspection national plan for 2001.
On Thursday evening, mission leader Menard, commenting on this meeting at a press conference, noted that sometimes Reporters Sans Frontieres can afford to be naive. Obviously, Mr. Menard has been informed that under the current circumstances in Ukraine, when it does not pay to do legal media business, tax inspections can be carried out selectively, without formally breaking the letter of the law. Moreover, Reporters Sans Frontieres expressed interest in taking the opportunity to participate in checking the legitimacy of tax officers’ actions in media conflicts and were assured that their appeals would be carefully considered.
