When Pharaoh Pulls Everything Into The Pyramid, It's Time To Worry
A genuine staffing tornado is darting through the regulatory authorities of the financial sector. Unfortunately, this is not just another attempt to cleanse our stables of corruption. This is a deliberate transfer of leverage and flows directly into the hands of the Presidential Office.
Just before the New Year, this tornado spat Ruslan Kravchenko behind the desk of the head of the State Tax Service and Philip Pronin into the chair of the head of the State Financial Monitoring Service.
The head of the State Customs Service, Serhii Zviahintsev, is hovering in the center of the vortex.
He could have been put behind bars for a really long time for non-statutory transactions with the Zakarpattia customs office, but the case was limited to failure to indicate his father-in-law’s house in the asset declaration. Well, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) know better where the corruption threat is greater. As of now, the culprit has been released on a mind-blowing bail of UAH 60,000 (less than $1,500), is awaiting trial and is trying to figure out what he likes — to cooperate with his new owners or to become “Dobby, the free elf.” However, we have already described in detail the changes in the relationship between the Presidential Office and the customs, which have made Zviahintsev’s modest person irrelevant. The Presidential Office has learned to control the customs directly.
Are we surprised that, having dealt with “customs issues,” the Office expanded its financial interest to related agencies?
A new tax office
For years, businesses have been emphasizing that the tax office should be headed not by an acting head, but by a permanent one. This head has been found, and he is fully empowered, appointed without any mass-market open competitions, by direct order from the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office, Oleh Tatarov; he is a prosecutor.
That is, not even Roman Nasirov (for those who remember, I hug you with a checkered blanket that Nasirov’s lawyers put on him as he arrived in court in a wheelchair), who at least had some MBAs and worked at Concorde Capital, but a classic prosecutor with a career as straight as the sword on the coat of arms of Ukraine’s prosecution system and an understanding of taxation at the level of an ordinary citizen, not even a businessperson.
We wanted a new chair, we got one.
Here is a funny story about Ruslan Kravchenko: after being in office for three days, he was not in the second paragraph, but immediately in the headline of the victorious news from the Security Service of Ukraine about the detention of a tax officer while taking a bribe. According to the Security Service, this detention would not have happened without “the assistance of the new head of the State Tax Service.” The real story, however, is very different: the tax officer took a bribe to help him get not a tax credit, but a bank loan. In other words, he turned out to be a banal cheat. But even if the news release had said the truth instead of “eliminated a criminal ‘scheme’ operating in the fiscal agency,” it is hard to imagine how Kravchenko, having finished the rest of his New Year’s food and shaved for the first time in 2025, went and contributed to the arrest.
It was a little embarrassing: the dancing had barely begun, and the Security Service had already hugged the head of the State Tax Service so hard that it is only appropriate to leave the room and turn off the lights.
Here is a not-so-funny story about Kravchenko: when landing, the house of this prosecutorial Dorothy Gale crushed not only the former head of the State Tax Service, Tetiana Kiriienko, but also half of the “Land of Oz,” i.e. the tax service. To list all those who have been in recent days would require a separate boring text, which we hope no one will write. But there are also significant aspects.
Firstly, such massive changes in the agency have not been seen since the creation and then liquidation of the Ministry of Revenues and Duties. And in all key areas, up to the level of heads of departments.
Secondly, regional leaders are also being actively replaced (not “shuffled” as usual) and the plan is that all of them are to be replaced, which will be unprecedented.
Thirdly, not a single person of Danylo Hetmantsev’s circle is left in the central office, including his old henchman Yevhen Sokur. So far, Kravchenko has only Nataliia Kalenichenko, who is in charge of digital development, which no one in the tax service cares about, and his eternal deputy Vladyslav Buhasov because there must be someone who knows the difference between VAT and personal income tax.
Fourthly, according to ZN.UA, Volodymyr Rybachuk, former deputy head of the K department (dealing with corruption and organized crime) at the Security Service of Ukraine, will soon be strengthening the powerful leadership trio. Of course, nothing can happen without the Security Service.
Those who have been following the story know that the war with the tax authorities ended on January 1, as scheduled documentary audits in 2025 are returning to pre-war levels. A prosecutor at the helm of the State Tax Service is a godsend, and a deputy from the Security Service of Ukraine is even better. Especially when people from the close circle have already been put in the white business club, making the rest of the entrepreneurs a priori “a little colored.” There are many proposals that can be made to them which they cannot refuse, and the tools of the State Financial Monitoring Service (SFMS) would be useful to make the arguments more powerful.
An even newer financial monitoring
What can I say, we remember Filip Pronin, the newly appointed head of the State Financial Monitoring Service, very well. First of all, he was one of the leaders of the National Agency for Finding, Tracing and Management of Assets Derived from Corruption and Other Crimes (ARMA). But don’t think that he was there looking for criminals’ assets without batting an eye. He was mostly engaged in offering assets for sale and making a fool of himself (although the latter seems to be provided for by the ARMA charter itself).
There is a funny story about him. Pronin once sold seized corn at a price six (!) times lower than the market price, despite a court order to lift the seizure of the grain the day before, depriving ARMA of any rights to dispose of the asset. The ZN.UA archive even has a proof of this shameful sale (see the document).
Of course, there is also the unfunny story of how Pronin sought access to the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations (URPI). Here, YouTube is already saving the proofs (see starting from 9:40). The reason why Pronin needed access to the URPI was purely commercial: he was trading information that he had brought to a professional level at ARMA and really sought to “scale the business” because he obviously had few people willing to hide his assets from the agency.
This information is widely known in narrow law enforcement circles: according to ZN.UA, during one of the NABU’s searches of ARMA, a detailed report was found on the computer of Pronin’s then subordinate, V. Vasylenko, on who was “given” valuable information and for what amount of money. Thus, Pronin was hired for a new job knowing full well about these talents, and it was obviously these talents, not corn dumping, that made his employers from the Presidential Office interested in him. They needed a person with a clear conscience and initiative to head the State Financial Monitoring Service.
The new head of the NABU is unlikely to have any questions about Pronin’s business ventures, as his strong male friendship with the current favorite of the Presidential Office, Oleksii Kuleba, will not allow it. By a miraculous coincidence, the latter used to be Pronin’s fellow student.
To add fuel to your anxiety, let us remind you that it is to the State Financial Monitoring Service, not the National Bank (NBU), that commercial banks send information on suspicious transactions of their clients. Accordingly, it is the State Financial Monitoring Service (and not the NBU) that is the first step in challenging any illegal actions of a bank that are justified by the requirements of financial monitoring. The zest is that each bank comes up with the criteria on its own, does not publish them anywhere and is not obliged to explain anything to the client, except for the memorized phrase “in accordance with the requirements of financial monitoring.” So, if your payment is blocked or your account is frozen or, for example, you are denied banking services altogether, you will have to go to Pronin for details.
I’m just sure that the service will flourish under his leadership like never before.
Old Presidential Office
So, as of now, the Presidential Office has taken direct control of customs, tax and financial services. But it is unlikely that they are doing this for the sake of the long-awaited end-to-end audit and the fight against the “shadow.” They have chosen the wrong personnel. Rather, the available resources will be used to build a corrupt money pipeline led by people with very specific skills, under Tatarov’s supervision and “with the support” of the Security Service.
The political explanation for this turmoil can easily be found in the Office’s desire to deprive Davyd Arakhamia of any influence, who, through “his” head of the Tax Committee, Hetmantsev, has long held the keys to all the country’s safe boxes. The head of the Servant of the People faction has long irritated the Office with his unbridled desire to pursue his own political agenda, and he even tried to make friends with the newly elected US authorities without asking his seniors. But the last straw was David Brown’s inability to distinguish between a weaver and a shoemaker. Rumor has it that it was Arakhamia’s assistant who organized an interview with Ukrainska Pravda journalist Mykhailo Tkach with one of the Veselykh brothers for an investigation that revealed the details of how the Office took control of the Karpatnaftokhim company.
The economic explanation for everything that is happening goes back to the times of Ancient Egypt. In anticipation of his imminent death, the pharaoh began to bring everything of value into the pyramid, from chests of gold to pretty teaspoons, to take with him to the next life after his reign. The obvious desire of the Office to concentrate the keys to all the safe boxes in their hands will inevitably turn into an insistent invitation to bring our chests and spoons to their pyramid. Whether Zelenskyy and Yermak use them for a new election campaign or take them with them to the “afterlife” of post-politics is not so important. What is important is that everyone will have to chip in.
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