Journalists unearthed the machinations of Kolomoisky’s comrade-in-arms with land tax in Volyn

The authorities of the Volyn region deliberately lower land tax rates for “close” businessmen, or even illegally exempt “party sponsors” from paying for land, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

There is talk about such a “scheme” in the city of Lutsk in the publication of the Volyn Investigative Journalism Agency. According to the publication, more than a million hryvnia of land tax was thus underpaid to the local budget.

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The publication provides one example of how land tax scams are carried out. In particular, back in 2014, the city council gave consent to OJSC “DEPARTMENT STORE LUTSK” to build a sports and recreation center on land plots of municipal property used by LLC “Football Club “Volyn”. The key figure in the “scheme” was the lawyer of the charitable foundation of Igor Palitsa - New Lutsk, Igor Polishchuk, an adviser to the Lutsk mayor and chairman of the faction led by the closest associate of the oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, Gennady Korban, of the UKROP party in the Lutsk city council.

The head of the Volyn Regional Council, ex-governor of the Odessa region, Igor Palitsa, “ruled” the Odessa region in the spring of 2014, having received his appointment a few days after the tragedy in the House of Trade Unions on May 2, 3014.

According to the Volyn Agency for Investigative Journalism, the owner of 93,94% of the shares of OJSC “UNIVERSAL STORE LUTSK” is the Cyprus offshore company GI COMPANY LINE SYSTEM MANAGEMENT LIMITED. Another offshore company associated with the Chairman of the Volyn Regional Council and a member of the ruling UKROP party Igor Palitsa has exactly the same registration address.

According to investigative journalists, the offshore company MANTIMUS Commercial LTD, associated with Palitsa, “also took over a controlling stake in the Volyn football club.”

After the completion of the construction of the sports and recreation center, the ownership of it was re-registered several times in connection with the purchase and sale between structures affiliated with the same owners - offshore companies of Igor Palitsa.

In particular, in January 2018, ownership of one of these plots transferred to Belaya Akatsiya LLC (USREOU code 30495324, Odessa).

The owners of “White Acacia,” according to Volyn journalists, are the offshore company Unilot Limited and a resident of the Israeli city of Yokneame Dmitry Potishman. The Odessa publication “Dumskaya” calls the latter the uncle of Igor Palitsa, the ex-governor of the Odessa region, and now the head of the Volyn regional council.

Journalists note that as of October 2018, contractual legal relations between the Lutsk City Council and Belaya Akatsiya LLC regarding the use of a land plot on the street. V. Moses, 1 were not issued. This follows from the fact that the draft of such an agreement has not yet been submitted for approval by the city council. The absence of a draft decision may be explained by the fact that the enterprise does not submit technical documentation for approval. This version was confirmed by sources of the publication “Business Capital” in the Lutsk City Council.

This may lead to the non-receipt of significant funds into the local budget for the use of communal land.

“Considering that the average cost of using a land plot is 1000 UAH per hundred square meters, it is easy to calculate that for 8 months of this year Lutsk could have received less than about 863 thousand UAH,” the publication concludes.

“Unfortunately, this is not the first case of “charity” from the Lutsk city authorities towards Igor Palitsa. This is how, having control over the majority in the city council, you can try to save on paying more than 1 million 500 thousand hryvnia to the city budget,” summarize the authors of the investigation.