President vows to stop checks on businesses given voluntary handover of documents
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has promised to stop unsubstantiated searches by law enforcement officers on condition that the suspects voluntarily hand over the required documents, Taras Kozak, the president of the Univer investment group, has said after a three-hour meeting between the head of state, Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko and business associations.
"Stop a 'mask show.' This will not happen again if a business entity voluntarily gives documents," Kozak said, posting one of the main promises of the authorities on his Facebook page.
According to him, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) opened a hot line for complaints about the illegal actions of law enforcement officers and raider seizures.
Kozak added that the parliamentary tax committee headed by Nina Yuzhanina would urgently work out a new bill on the Financial Investigation Service so as to adopt it before the end of this year, and from the second quarter of 2018 this service will begin its work, while the right of all other law enforcers to check businesses will be cancelled.
The meeting participant noted that at its opening the heads of three associations - the European Business Association (EBA), the American Chamber of Commerce (ACC) and the Union of Ukrainian Entrepreneurs (UUE) - "all called the arbitrariness of law enforcers a major problem of business" and asked for concrete decisions.
Kozak quoted Lutsenko as replying that there were 200,000 law enforcement officers in the country and that all of them could not be controlled, but criminal proceedings have already been opened against 3,000 of them.
Among other news from the meeting, its participant highlighted the impossibility of introducing a draft law on distributed capital tax from 2018 due to the IMF's categorical objections, the preservation of a simplified taxation system without any changes, as well as the promises of deregulation, privatization, currency liberalization and the protection of creditor rights.
The meeting was moderated by Secretary of the National Investment Council of Ukraine and former Head of the Presidential Administration Borys Lozhkin, and also attended by concerned ministers, heads of the Security Service of Ukraine and the National Police.
"The business, practically unanimously, called the methods of work of the law enforcement agencies as a major issue that needs to be urgently solved. Prosecutor General Lutsenko assured those present that he is keeping the situation under control and ready to meet investors halfway," Lozhkin said, briefly describing the main results of the meeting.
He noted that as secretary of the National Investment Council, a communication platform between business and government, he hopes for the adoption of a number of decisions that will significantly and systematically improve the conditions for doing business in Ukraine.
The National Investment Council is a consultative body under the President of Ukraine. The chairman of the council is President Petro Poroshenko, the secretary is Lozhkin, and the head of office is Yulia Kovaliv. The purpose of the council is to build an effective dialogue between business and government. Now the personal composition of the council is at the stage of approval. The council's office has been working since the beginning of 2017.
