The Security Service of Ukraine declared suspicion to Ukrainian businessman Pavlo Fuchs in connection with ‘large-scale financial manipulations with strategic enterprises of the state and systematic tax evasion’. Fuchs called such accusations ungrounded.

The press release of the Security Service states that since 2018, the businessman ‘illegally took over the assets of Ukrainian companies worth more than UAH 100 billion’.

It is also stated that during the frauds, the businessman and accomplices ‘received excess profits and avoided paying taxes’. The SBU estimates the losses caused to the state in this way to almost UAH 100 million.

In turn, the businessman called the SBU’s statement ‘ungrounded’ and ‘related exclusively to the personal economic interest of individuals in the leadership of the SBU and other structures’. Fuchs called the allegations ‘slanderous’ and an attempt to damage his business reputation. At the same time, the businessman is convinced that the motives are not related to the protection of the interests of the state or the national security of Ukraine.

In June 2021, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi implemented the decision of the National Security and Defense Council  against Pavlo Fuchs as a citizen of Russia (whose citizenship he left in 2017). The current suspicion was reported by the SBU to Pavlo Fuchs as a citizen of Ukraine, although Fuchs continues to be under sanctions:

‘I want to draw special attention to the fact that the SBU announced a notice of suspicion against me as a citizen of Ukraine, which at the same time confirmed my lack of Russian citizenship and nullified the justification for the sanctions imposed on me in June 2021 – allegedly because I am a citizen of the Russian Federation’.

The businessman stated that the leadership of the Security Service of Ukraine and the National Security Council of Ukraine is misleading the President of Ukraine and Ukrainian society ‘by being guided by their own interests, not the interests of Ukrainian society’.