Countering Economic crimes and cross-border financial schemes: Leadership of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine Participates in a working meeting with the State Tax Service of Ukraine and the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine

The Leadership of the Economic Security Bureau of Ukraine participated in a working meeting attended by Filip Pronin, Head of the State Financial monitoring Service of Ukraine and Acting Head of the State Tax Service of Ukraine Lesia Karnaukh. During the event, participants discussed interagency cooperation, joint efforts in investigating financial crimes, and the work of the Center for Countering Tax Offenses.

In his address, Acting Director of the ESBU Serhii Perhkun noted that a continuous exchange of analytical information has already been established between the institutions, enabling the timely suspension of suspicious transactions. However, a number of issues still require resolution (need to be resolved).

“Since the beginning of the year, we have received nearly 100 case files from the SFMS alone, most of which have been added to existing criminal proceedings or have served as the basis for new ones. At the same time, there are several problems that require the consolidation of our efforts. For example, the use of sole proprietors in schemes to evade taxes and withdraw funds in cash. To enable faster responses to such cases, we propose unifying the approaches of tax authorities when reviewing the ESBU’s recommendations,” Serhii Perkhun stated.

The meeting also addressed further steps for effective interaction between the institutions, including the process of identifying assets of sanctioned entities, typical tax evasion schemes used in international business operations, and the specifics of applying the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for automatic exchange of tax information between countries.

As mentioned earlier, the STS, the SFMS, and the ESBU signed a trilateral Memorandum of Cooperation. This document provides for institutional interaction in the field of preventing and countering the laundering of proceeds from crime and the financing of terrorism.