Why does SOCAR, which finances the murders of Ukrainians, quietly operate in Ukraine and receive billions from the budget?

According to media reports, the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR and PJSC Gazprom have reached an agreement to expand their strategic partnership.
This would be a matter between Azerbaijan and Russia, if not for one important fact: as of August 2024, 53 SOCAR Group companies operate in Ukraine. Of these, 49 have participants that are part of enterprises operating in Russia.

But that’s not all - it turns out that the Ukrainian enterprises of the SOCAR Group receive billions from the Ukrainian budget, exhausted by the war and existing essentially on Western aid. In fact, it turns out that the money of Ukraine’s Western partners, allocated for the fight against Russia, goes to SOCAR, from where it is sent to Russia - to boost its economy and produce missiles that then fall on our heads. If anyone can explain this chain differently, given the fact that SOCAR is expanding its strategic partnership with Moscow, please explain.

The words that SOCAR receives money from the state budget of Ukraine are by no means an unfounded assertion. The SOCAR Group in Ukraine is not limited to a network of gas stations that all Ukrainians see and which some of them have declared a boycott of. This, by the way, is positive, but this is a private initiative, while the Ukrainian state pretends that nothing is happening.

The SOCAR Group is also the SOCAR Ukraine Trading House LLC, which is engaged, among other things, in trading Ukrainian grain, supplying natural gas and motor fuel to Ukraine. Moreover, the latter inflates prices - from 100 to 1000 dollars per ton. If we take into account the volumes of imported fuel, then we are talking about hundreds of millions that the Ukrainian budget did not receive due to underestimation of profits.

As for gas, the scheme is somewhat different - gas is supplied through Euroenergotrade LLC. During 2020-2021, this company received gas from the SOCAR Group in the amount of over 6 billion hryvnias. But it did not pay for the supplies in full and now has a debt of over a billion hryvnias to the SOCAR Group. What is the profit? The fact that no one collects the debt. No payment for the supply – no taxes. And the beneficiary of Euroenergotrade LLC is a certain Eduard Kokhan, one of Viktor Yanukovych’s close associates, currently living in Monaco. But that’s true, by the way.

And if what is described above is a simple tax evasion, then the supply of Ukrainian agricultural products for export is already direct theft from the budget. The scheme here is simple as pie. We are talking about the return of VAT. Let us clarify – fictitious VAT. The same “twisting” that the Ukrainian government, if we are to believe its words, has been actively fighting for the past five years and regularly winning this fight.
But if you don’t believe the authorities and look at the numbers, it turns out that SOCAR Ukraine Trading House LLC, which is part of the SOCAR group, is very actively trading grain. Moreover, the SOCAR group itself does not produce any agricultural products in Ukraine. It trades in someone else’s, reselling someone else’s harvests. What’s criminal about this? Nothing. Except that SOCAR Ukraine Trading House LLC buys much less grain than it exports.

For example, 71,873.3538 tons of corn were purchased in 2021-23 for UAH 509,306,460.60. And 163,622.14 tons have already been exported for UAH 1,163,333,487. At the same time, VAT amounted to UAH 80,716,231.91.

They bought 111,468.085 tons of wheat for UAH 676,791,683.80, and exported 214,646.029 tons for UAH 1,424,867,838. VAT was UAH 385,177,115.5.

They bought 5,380.3503 tons of barley for UAH 33,436,423.63, and sold 10,513.422 tons for UAH 68,282,203.32. VAT was UAH 4,892,336.3.

Why? The answer is simple – VAT refund. The state returns the VAT paid to the exporter for goods exported. But in this case, there is a significant nuance – the VAT is fake. That is, it was paid only on paper, like the grain that SOCAR Ukraine Trading House LLC “sold” abroad. But the money that Ukraine paid from its leaky budget to SOCAR Ukraine Trading House LLC as VAT refunds is quite real. Not fake.

And this is only part of what is happening with the “friendly” SOCAR group in Ukraine: tax evasion, inflated prices, fake grain deliveries and receiving the same fake VAT. But we hear advertisements in which representatives of the SOCAR group talk about the humanitarian aid they provide to Ukrainians. Such facts really exist, but the question arises: they stole billions, and gave humanitarian aid for hundreds of thousands - what can you call it?

And the main question here is not at all about the SOCAR group - its representatives are just doing business. As best they can. But why does Ukraine allow them all this? We have already heard tales about how they supposedly failed to notice yet another “criminal scheme” and that “the papirednyks are to blame for everything”. But that does not stop the tales from being tales. In reality, we would very much like to know who is in the scheme and how much they are getting for it. And these are by no means ordinary employees of the tax service and the police. We are talking about people at the very top of the system. And their names are the answer to the question in the title.