Two thousand employees of the restaurant holding received salaries “in an envelope” – the BEB exposed the scheme. This was reported on the BEB website on the evening of October 17.
Previously, the mass media wrote about searches in the Lviv office of the !FEST holding, Hromadske reports. Thus, the company’s co-owner Yuriy Nazaruk stated in a comment to Forbes Ukraine that on October 17, around 2:00 p.m., BEB employees came to the central office of the holding. This was also confirmed by the publication’s source in the law enforcement agencies.
BEB detectives in Lviv exposed a particularly large tax evasion scheme by the holding, which includes 60 restaurants and retail outlets.
Employees of the Bureau of Economic Security established that about 2,000 employees of institutions included in the holding receive wages in two parts: one is official, minimal with payment of all mandatory payments, and the other is unofficial.
In order to pay the latter, each employee at the time of hiring made a duplicate to the salary payment card, which he handed over to the personnel department.
Later, using this duplicate, the representative of the main office of the holding credited the second part of the salary to each employee, noting in the purpose of payment “own replenishment of the account”.
Shadow wages were sent to payment cards once or twice a month.
In this way, the company evaded the payment of military duty, the Unified social contribution that the company must pay, and personal income tax. Preliminary losses to the state budget amount to more than UAH 50 million.
According to this fact, criminal proceedings have been opened, part 3 of Article 212, Part 3 of Art. 212-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, in the form of deliberate evasion of personal income tax, military duty, single social contribution in a particularly large amount.
In addition, according to the preliminary information of the detectives, the mentioned institutions did not use PRO during settlements with clients and received payment from clients in cash. Later, the funds were transferred to the head office in Lviv.
During the search of the premises of the main office of the holding, detectives found official documents that testify to illegal business transactions, cash, drafts, seals, etc.
Currently, the investigation is ongoing. Procedural management is carried out by the Prosecutor General’s Office.
About the holding
!FEST is a holding company founded by Andrii Khudo, Yuriy Nazaruk and Dmytro Gerasimov in 2007 in Lviv. The company is represented by such establishments as “Drunken Cherry”, “Rebernya”, “Lviv Chocolate Workshop”, “Lviv Squares”, “Kryivka”, etc.
On October 18, detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security conducted a search in the main office of the holding, which includes more than 60 different business entities.
On the basis of the decision of the investigating judge of the Shevchenkiv District Court of the city of Kyiv, a search was conducted at the address of the head office of the group of companies in Lviv.
1. Before the start of the investigative action, the employees of the Bureau of Economic Security provided the company representatives with a decision to conduct a search and explained the procedure for conducting it, as well as the rights and obligations of the participants in the search.
2. The search lasted 16 hours. During this time, 25 detectives and 6 employees for operational support worked over 2,000 square meters of the territory where the office is located, and the building itself, which has 5 floors and 7 separate exits.
3. During the search, lawyers, management and employees of the office, as well as the company’s security guard, who had weapons with him, were present at the site.
4. According to the results of the search, the detectives discovered and seized, in compliance with all norms of the current legislation:
⁃ 415 bank cards belonging to employees and employees of the group of companies
⁃ registers for replenishment of bank accounts, documents regarding calculation and payment of wages to employees
⁃ cash: various currencies in the monetary equivalent of about UAH 8,000,000
5. It was the acquisition of these evidences that led to the search. After all, it would be impossible to obtain them by conducting other procedural actions.
6. Computer equipment was not removed from the office, all premises and safes were opened by representatives of the enterprise voluntarily, without the use of special means.
7. At the same time, investigative actions were carried out taking into account the specifics of the enterprise’s work and without creating circumstances that would prevent its further legal activity.
8. No requests were received from the representatives of the holding regarding violations by BEB employees during the search.