The head of Volyn Regional Council Ihor Palytsya has addressed an official letter to the Consul General of the Republic of Poland in Lutsk, Wieslaw Mazur, on the situation at the border.
The matter is that goods transported across the state border of Ukraine are declared in the territory of Poland. However, when crossing the border from the Ukrainian side, they are not fixed in any way.
“In particular, vehicles filled with various types of goods are moving precisely across the customs checkpoints located in the territory of Volyn region. There is a reasonable suspicion that this is happening with the assistance of the relevant officials of Volyn customs office of DFS, territorial bodies of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine,” said Ihor Palytsya.
There are numerous cases of declaration of cargoes by knowingly understated customs value of imported goods in order to minimize the payment of import duties, value added tax to the general and special funds of the state budget of Ukraine.
Besides, the UKROP member emphasizes that many vehicles imported into the territory of Ukraine are cleared through the simplified order, with submitting unreliable documents. This happens due to the artificial depreciation of the cost of vehicles, the increase in the number of defects in imported cars or the failure in considering essential requirements for environmental standards and other norms. That is what makes it possible to carry out clearance of cars at artificially low tariffs.
“However, the most massive phenomenon is the import of vehicles registered in foreign states into the customs territory of Ukraine as “temporary import”, without registration in Ukraine. This happens by presenting documents with signs of forgery or unchecked documents. Cars are imported with conditional full or partial exemption from taxation by customs payments and without applying non-tariff regulation,” explains Ihor Palytsya.
In this regard, the UKROP member offers to join the efforts of the Ukrainian and Polish parties. In particular, one of the possible ways to resolve the situation may be to give the Ukrainian side access to information on the carload of cars from Polish customs bases.
It is also advisable to create a joint group of representatives from both countries involved in studying these issues, seeking solutions to problem situations, and overcoming corruption schemes in order to effectively fill the budgets of the member states of the foreign economic relations of the European Community as a whole.
“We believe that only by having reliable information about the quantitative and value characteristics of imported goods, comparing the information received from the customs authorities with the information available in the national databases, we will be able to influence the flow of taxes, fees to the state budget, withdrawal of cash flows from the shadow economy and bringing the perpetrators to justice. In this regard, we are asking you to assist in solving this problem by providing access to databases of the customs authorities of the Republic of Poland,” notes Ihor Palytsya.
In addition the head of Volyn Regional Council says: “We are also asking for the creation of the aforementioned joint group of representatives of both states, sending relevant appeals to competent Polish authorities, and finding alternative ways of legalizing the movement of goods across the Polish-Ukrainian border.”
