Detectives of the ESBU in Lviv exposed a large-scale tax evasion scheme by a holding company comprising 60 restaurants and retail outlets.

Employees of the Economic Security Bureau established that about 2000 employees of the holding's establishments receive salaries in two parts: one is official the minimum with payment of all mandatory payments and the other is unofficial.

In order to pay the latter each employee when hired made a duplicate copy of the salary card and submitted it to the HR department.

Later using this duplicate a representative of the holding's head office credited the second part of the salary to each employee, indicating "own account replenishment" in the purpose of payment.

The shadow wages were transferred to cards for payment once or twice a month.

In this way the company evaded paying the military fee the unified social tax which the company must pay and personal income tax. The preliminary losses to the state budget amount to over UAH 50 million.

Criminal proceedings were initiated under Part 3 of Art. 212, Part 3 of Art. 212-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine in the form of intentional evasion of payment of personal income tax, military duty and a single social contribution in a particularly large amount.

In addition, according to preliminary information from detectives the above-mentioned establishments did not use cash registers in settlements with customers and received payments from customers in cash. The funds were then transferred to the head office in Lviv.

During the search of the holding's head office, detectives found official documents proving illegal business transactions, cash, draft records, seals, etc.

The investigation is ongoing. Procedural supervision is provided by the Prosecutor General's Office.