PM to launch official investigation into SFS senior officials. Leadership's ouster from office

Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk has decided to launch an official investigation into the activities of senior officials of the State Fiscal Service. The SFS head and his two deputies will be suspended for the period of the investigation.

The PM said this during a conference call with the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine on Tuesday, 24 February.

"I am not going to put up with what I read in letters and public information in the media about abuse in the State Fiscal Service, the customs service and tax police," he stressed.

"According to the materials submitted by the SFS, the entire State Fiscal Service, tax police and customs officers should be assigned with the title of hero. But if you read interviews of real people who are in business, I can clearly say that the first six months the State Fiscal Service worked as the Ukrainians expected after Maidan, in the second half – as it used to," Arseniy Yatsenyuk underlined.

He said that he decided to launch an official investigation into the activities of senior officials of the State Fiscal Service: "This relates to the head of the State Fiscal Service, his deputy, head of the tax police and his deputy, head of the customs service."

The Ukraine’s Government dismisses the SFS leadership for the period of the official investigation.

The Prime Minister said that within the two weeks of the official investigation the Cabinet of Ministers will daily "cooperate with Ukrainian business to establish specific facts of abuse in the State Fiscal Service, customs service and tax police - concerning bribery for acts, money laundering, covering" black" import and other abuses that today exist in the system."

Arseniy Yatsenyuk called on entrepreneurs and businesses to help the Government in conducting the internal investigation.

He has also said that he had a conversation with the President of Ukraine "and he is convinced that the President, who controls the Security Service of Ukraine, would hold the similar staff cleaning in the SBU", "I believe that there would be the similar staff purification in the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine. As those who are supposed to protect the law are protecting themselves from the law."

In addition, Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that today he instructed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov to assign the internal security department of the MIA responsible for an internal investigation and cleaning of the staff in the Ministry, "An organized criminal group, which includes primarily police officers, should be destroyed."