The owners of the Krupyany Dvor, Attual and Trapeza enterprises, located in the Odesa region, appealed to the human rights association "Pravoe Delo" and to the head of the political party "Servant of the People" Elena Shulyak with a request not to block their work during martial law .
Currently, this group of companies occupies an important strategic position in the country, as it provides cereals, legumes, cereal breads and salt to at least 30-40% of the consumers of the Ukrainian market. After the full-scale invasion of Russia, these enterprises did not stop production, but continued their work in full.
Moreover, in the conditions of the recent "salt crisis" after the shutdown of the monopolist enterprise Artemsol, the owners of the company bought a stock of imported salt that was supposed to be sent abroad and arranged for its delivery from Turkey.
However, as the head of the human rights association "Pravoe delo" Oleg Mykhaylyk said, the law enforcement officers unjustifiably decided to obstruct the company's activities. On July 12, 2022, the inspection bodies blocked the work of enterprises located in the village of Radostnoe Berezovskogo District, Odesa Region.
"Employees of the Odesa Regional Prosecutor's Office, with the help of the police, decided that the enterprises "feel too good about themselves" and decided to persuade them to "negotiate". Our specialists found out that as part of the criminal case, there were some arbitrary searches even in the private apartments of the owners of the enterprises, despite the fact that the responsibility for the actions of the enterprise is not the owners, but the accountant and the director of the enterprise," explains Oleg Mykhaylyk.
Despite the fact that the group of companies is a large taxpayer, the investigation informed them of suspicion under Part 3 of Art. 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Evasion from payment of taxes). However, according to the data available in the editorial office, only in 2021 three companies (OOO "Krupny dvor", OOO "Attual" and OOO "Trapeza") jointly paid taxes to the state in the amount of more than UAH 62 million. And for the first half of the military year of 2022, the companies replenished the country's state budget by UAH 30 million.
"At first, it was about non-payment of taxes, which was calculated in some colossal numbers - about 7 thousand tax-free minimums of unpaid taxes. Then it turned out that the company has an official document from the tax office, that there are no claims and everything has been paid. After that, law enforcement officials began to connect some non-existent online store to the case... The reason is that the corrupt are still, unfortunately, both in the regional prosecutor's office and in the Odessa police. They wanted to receive a bribe and now they are interfering in every possible way with the work of a strategically important enterprise — one of the few remaining in the Odesa region that allows closing food issues," Oleg Mykhaylyk added.
At the moment, the work of the Krupyany Dvor, Attual and Trapeza group of companies is actually blocked. During the searches, the employees of the investigative department of the National Security Service of Ukraine in the Odesa region seized computer equipment and documentation. The unloading of thirty trucks that brought scarce salt from Turkey was also blocked.
"Today, procedural prosecutors do not want to return this documentation. They appealed to the investigative judge Feduleeva to recognize these piles of papers with commercial and technical documentation as material evidence and not to return them until the end of the investigation. Thus, the company is deprived of operational management, fulfillment of its obligations under contracts with its trading partners," the head of the human rights association "Pravoe delo" emphasized.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor himself refused to answer the journalists' questions, while the owners of the Krupyany Dvor, Attual and Trapeza enterprises are confident in their rightness and will continue to prove their innocence in court.
