At a March 20 meeting with representatives of the diplomatic corps at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, State Tax Administration [STA] Director Mykola Azarov cast serious reproach on complicity in Ukrainian money laundering. According to him, state officials of the countries through which dirty money is transported are unwilling to present information on such dubious operations to Ukrainian law enforcement organs: “I can present you hundreds of requests to which we never received any reply. I cannot consider ignoring these requests anything but complicity with our criminals.” And all this is despite the fact that Ukraine has signed agreements with most countries on practical assistance in this field, Mr. Azarov stressed. In this connection he called on foreign diplomats to give needed support to solve this problem on their level. As for Ukraine’s internal situation, Mr. Azarov is convinced that in a few years the problem of cashing and converting criminal money will be solved: five times reducing of operations volume lay a solid foundation for this.
Parliamentary elections were a significant part of Mr. Azarov’s speech. The diplomats learned that the STA has forwarded to the Central Elections Committee all data on violations revealed from auditing candidates’ tax declarations. In total, according to Mr. Azarov, discrepancies turned up in 2001 property and income declarations of 637 party and blocs candidates and 870 district ones. Mr. Azarov also noted that all the declarations were checked in spite of whether a candidate belongs to one of the parties of power or the opposition: for instance, in the For a United Ukraine Bloc violations were found in 46 candidates’ declarations, while in the Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc there were 34 such cases. “The investigation was carried out without respect to persons or the scale of declarations’ deviation from reality, be it dozens of hryvnias or candidates’ property or corporate rights,” Mr. Azarov said. In his view, the fact that untrue data in tax declarations were revealed among 32 parties and election blocs is yet additional evidence of the tax service’s impartiality. Speaking on the nature of this phenomenon, the STA head emphasized that people who run for parliament seats are “far from poor,” and many of them have gotten used to double accounting, making one finance report for the tax service and another for themselves.
Tax service’s participation in the current elections campaign, in Mr. Azarov’s words, is restricted only to verifying candidates’ declarations, which is envisioned by law. In other respects it has “distanced itself on principle and in public from any participation in the political struggle.” Mr. Azarov referred to his personal example: for the elections period he had suspended his party membership, while all tax servicemen who have used their constitutional right to run as deputies were asked to go on leave during this period. The head of the tax service also reminded those present of his order proclaiming a moratorium on any tax inspections in the mass media and confirmed that at present none of them is being inspected by tax service.
Mr. Azarov spoke rather skeptically on the suggestions on reforming tax legislation contained in some candidates’ programs (including the attempt to revive the tithe levied in Kyiv Rus’). In his opinion, if Ukraine strives for European integration, it should orient itself toward European tax legislation, although it is also imperfect.
