Prosecutor General promises support for "white" business: billions in losses from shadow economy calculated in Ukraine

At a roundtable organized by the American Chamber of Commerce (ACC), the recently appointed Prosecutor General of Ukraine Ruslan Kravchenko promised to step up the fight against illegal business (in particular, smuggling) in the country's main markets for goods and services.

This was reported by the official website of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.

Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko emphasized his "readiness to actively cooperate with honest business to develop and implement the most effective measures to stop illegal activities."

During the roundtable, the new Prosecutor General, as well as heads of leading regulatory bodies and MPs of Ukraine, listened to the main proposals of business on combating the shadow economy.

In particular, in the retail and e-commerce sectors, business representatives noted distortions of competition and losses to the state budget due to mass orders of clothing, footwear and other products from abroad. In 2024, 75 million shipments of goods arrived in Ukraine. Due to the absence of import VAT on the vast majority of these deliveries, the state budget lost about UAH 19 billion last year.

In the catering sector, the main problem is a large number of companies operating without appropriate permits.

The tobacco industry is one of the most problematic: according to KantarUkraine, the volume of illegal products in 2025 reached 16.2%, budget losses - over UAH 25 billion. To reduce the impact of the shadow market, business proposes to strengthen control and inspection measures and state examinations, finally adopt bill No. 9364 on strengthening responsibility for the illegal circulation of excisable goods (the draft passed its first reading in April 2024), and also create a "library of samples" of finished products - for faster identification of counterfeits.

In the alcohol market, the main problem is price dumping by illegal producers. The main proposal is to resume the annual review of minimum prices for alcohol, which could give the state budget an additional over UAH 2 billion.

But in the household appliances market, "shadow traders" mainly concentrate on the most expensive but compact products - smartphones, laptops, watches, headphones, etc. For example, for certain smartphone models, the share of illegal products reached 80%. The total amount of state budget losses from unpaid taxes in this market in 2025 can reach UAH 10 billion.

In the field of fixed Internet, there is a gradual transition of major companies from using schemes with individual entrepreneurs to the general taxation system. And although some providers are trying to "save" - ​​in particular, through payments to individual entrepreneurs with non-core classification of economic activities. But nevertheless, in the first quarter of 2025, the amount of taxes paid in the industry increased by one and a half times (compared to the same period in 2024) - from UAH 0.8 to UAH 1.2 billion.

In addition to the new Prosecutor General, the round table was also attended by MPs - heads of the tax committee and the law enforcement committee of the parliament, representatives of the European Union, the leadership of the State Tax Service, the State Customs Service, the National Bank of Ukraine, the National Police, the Ministry of Digital Information, as well as the Business Ombudsman of Ukraine and the heads of the largest Ukrainian companies.

It also became known that this is not the last meeting of the new Prosecutor General with business this week - another communication of Ruslan Kravchenko with leading Ukrainian companies is scheduled for tomorrow - July 4, 2025.

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