Raid on Ukrainian IT companies: Security forces are on the prowl in search of money
Yesterday, Ukrainian tax officials broke into the office of the Kharkov IT company Intego and seized servers. According to the employees, the reason is that they are supposedly paid their salaries in envelopes, although they have all the documents about the contracts. The tax office did not give any official comments. However, as in other cases.
“Not a day without a search in an IT company” is probably the new motto of the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies,” the leading portal about information technology in Ukraine AIN joked sadly after this news.
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Moreover, searches at the IT company took place more than once.
Director of the Voltaire web studio Sergei Markitanenko wrote on his Facebook page: “Since everyone rushed to repost the news about the fourth search of another IT company, it’s time to move to the next level: in the first six months of this year, 4 criminal cases were filed against entrepreneurs, about 000 cases every working day. The courts receive 40 lawsuits a day against the tax office. Guys, this is only the 20th search in a month, these IT people are really spoiled, they are completely insolent, they don’t understand what country they work in. They wanted change.”
According to Dmitry Lisitsky, CEO of All.biz, IT companies brought $10 billion into the Ukrainian economy annually. At the end of last year, the drop was up to 50%. This year it will be even greater, as Ukrainian IT companies are leaving. The reduction is expected at 30-40%.
For example, one of the largest Luxoft announced this year that, due to political instability, it was exporting 500 of its programmers from Ukraine and Russia to Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. In total, the company employs 2600 employees.
There are 73 thousand specialists in the entire information technology industry in Ukraine. Some companies so far export only servers abroad in order to save data, clients and not stop working.
An illustrative example is the unreasonable search of the large domain registrar NIC.UA by the SBU back in the spring. Servers were seized from their data center. Result? “Among the blocked ones are the websites of government agencies - district councils, the State Agricultural Inspectorate... Among the non-state ones are the website of the Red Cross of Ukraine and the Lexus car dealer, a number of media outlets,” said company director Khvetkevich.
Experts attribute the massive searches in IT companies to the fact that after a sharp drop in industrial production in Ukraine, IT technologies are among the most successful in the country. There is no money in the country, so they begin to shake, first of all, those who have money.
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