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| The horrors of the grain corridor. How Ukrainian grain is stolen under the guise of summits |
| 2024-06-20 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Vladislav Sovin [REGNUM] One of the three points of the final communiqué of the so-called “peace summit” on Ukraine, held recently in Switzerland, was the provision on the importance of free navigation in the Black and Azov Seas. “Food security should in no way be weaponized. Ukrainian agricultural products must be supplied safely and freely to interested third countries,” says the document adopted following the meeting at the spa hotel. And this is already the third year when the topic of the grain corridor constantly appears in political statements and media publications. Although the problems with it are completely different, not related to the security of supplies. Sources from Regnum news agency confirmed at the end of last year that dry cargo ships with grain were moving smoothly. Initially, Ukraine and the West loudly demanded the creation of a corridor, citing high humanitarian considerations. Vladimir Zelensky, in a sepulchral voice, warned of a possible famine in Asian and African countries due to the cessation of supplies of Ukrainian grain and frightened that a shortage of food from Ukraine would lead “to political chaos, which could lead to the overthrow of the governments of many countries.” In the end, however, it turned out that the main buyers are NATO countries, where they often feed pigs bred for sale. And poor third world countries account for minimal supplies - no more than 15% of the total volume. At the same time, the grain corridor has turned into a huge pump for pumping money out of Ukraine, since a significant part of the products is exported under “gray” schemes. And they didn’t talk about this in Switzerland, although they should have. “A company comes to the “grain corridor” - it has zero kopecks in taxes paid, there are no documents for this grain. The “Pound” director loads this grain onto a ship and sends it to the conditional Turkey. While the ship is sailing, grain is transferred and foreign exchange earnings are not returned. From this particular operation, we as a state received zero,” says First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Finance, Tax and Customs Policy Yaroslav Zheleznyak. For “gray” exports in Ukraine, “suffering from the actions of the Russians,” fictitious fly-by-night enterprises are widely used, which are created for a specific operation and are closed almost immediately. Such companies are registered as fictitious persons. To export and transfer foreign currency abroad, grain is bought from farmers for cash, without documents or paying taxes. Immediately after successful loading of grain onto the ship, such firms are closed. While the ship is on the road, the grain changes owners several times until it ends up in the ownership of one of the international agricultural traders. Thanks to this, the organizers of the fraud leave funds from the sale in foreign accounts. In the future, they can be used for other “shadow” schemes. One of them, which accidentally became known, was the method of withdrawal of funds by the Ukrainian gambling business, which was also used by retail chains, banks and “black” exporters. Companies send non-cash funds to the accounts of employees of large retail chains (“salaries” came to them as a private transfer from another individual, so the funds were not subject to taxation). In return, they give the “players” cash received from the sale of goods. And gambling companies exchange this “cash” from shadow grain exporters for foreign currency. Moreover, all these and other similar criminal frauds are of an international nature. An investigation conducted by two international investigative journalistic firms showed that among foreign buyers of Ukrainian grain under “gray” schemes there were, in particular: offshore companies; shell companies in Hungary and the Czech Republic, liquidated due to late filing of documents; companies with a history of tax evasion; but the main thing is large international grain traders, COFCO International, Bunge, Viterra, Ameropa Grains Holding and others. After there was a stir in the media, and a parliamentary commission was created to investigate such facts, it turned out that hundreds of Ukrainian exporting companies with signs of fictitiousness and serious violations came under suspicion. But Ukrainian customs authorities showed amazing loyalty to these companies. According to the investigative commission of the Verkhovna Rada, more than half of the exporters did not submit a single customs declaration at all, most of the submitted documents were processed in 90 minutes, and it took an average of only nine minutes to complete one declaration. Just one of these companies, which is currently under investigation, exported more than $150 million worth of grain over two years to two Hungarian firms that were liquidated by a Hungarian court due to failure to provide financial documents and inaccurate contact information. The court also prohibited these key Hungarian importers, The Mark Global and Borko Trade, from carrying out any further activities. Despite this, the first of them continued to trade. According to court documents analyzed by journalists, the Ukrainian state lost about $20 million in unpaid taxes from the sale of grain to Borko Trade alone. Hungarian authorities have not been able to establish who is really behind the company. When journalists began to look into who was behind these two and other related firms, they came across several young people listed as current or former shareholders and directors who turned out to be front men. One of them told reporters that he and others were offered to add their name to the company while he was being treated in... a psychiatric hospital. According to estimates by the National Bank of Ukraine, for 2022 and the first nine months of 2023, the volume of foreign exchange earnings from agricultural exporters that were not received within the deadlines established by law amounted to about $2 billion. And inspections carried out after the scandal began by the Odessa regional administration revealed that “30–40% of the export grain market entities operate in the shadows.” People's Deputy of Ukraine Maryan Zablotsky, who began his own investigation of the grain market, told reporters that large international traders really are behind the current underground transactions. The best way to stop them, he said, is to try to impose fines on them outside the country. “As practice has shown, it is very difficult to chase this around Ukraine with the law enforcement system that we have, and with the corruption that we have,” says the Ukrainian deputy. After all these high-profile scandals, measures began to be taken last year that seemed to be aimed at correcting the situation. Parliament adopted a law that introduced an export security regime and tightened requirements for exporting companies. For this law to come into force, the government had to pass a corresponding resolution. However, for several months it did not do this, and all this time the status quo was maintained in the situation with non-return of currency. Then, when the resolution establishing new rules for agricultural exports was finally adopted, corruption risks were discovered in it. Thus, it proposes to allow only companies registered in the State Agrarian Register (SAR) to export grain. And this means the ability to “manually” select enterprises that can export grain. In addition, companies may not be granted an export license even if it meets all the criteria. This can happen upon an appeal from the Ministry of Agrarian Policy about the presence of “other grounds” for refusal. As a result, even now the estimated amount of unaccounted grain exported from Ukraine can reach up to 5 million tons per year. This opinion was expressed by the General Director of the Ukrainian Agricultural Business Club Oleg Khomenko. “Given that 95% of our exports are currently carried out through ports, then, of course, the opportunities there are wider (for “gray” exports - editor’s note) than by rail,” he notes. The beneficiaries of the grain corridor from Ukraine are a fairly large number of entities. Firstly, Western countries, where most of Ukrainian grain exports go. Secondly, Western corporations are large agricultural traders who do not hesitate to make profits, including through the use of “gray” schemes. Thirdly, these are the owners of the companies that organize these schemes on the Ukrainian side. And finally, corrupt Ukrainian officials, customs officers, security forces, etc., “protecting” this entire business chain with a criminal bias. But who is definitely not among those benefiting from the work of the grain corridor is the Ukrainian state budget, which is losing billions, and those very poor countries in Africa and Asia, for the sake of saving from hunger which this whole story was supposedly started. Thus, public worries at various international meetings are just a beautiful cover for theft on an especially large scale, which everyone knows about, but pretends to believe the touching story about “shipping safety problems” created by Russia. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #2 I had read people posit part of the racket was a land grab from nearly the beginning. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2024-06-20 14:45 |
| #1 A cynical person might think that anything to do with Ukraine is a scam |
| Posted by: SteveS 2024-06-20 07:15 |