Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman will appeal to the Security Service of Ukraine, Ministry of Internal Affairs and the State Fiscal Service with a request to check operations regarding the counterfeit pure alcohol in state-owned enterprises.

The Head of the Government commented on the information of the Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine Taras Kutovy regarding the possible actions under the building of the Government on Wednesday organized by those involved in the production of counterfeit spirits by enterprises of SE Ukrspyrt Corporation.

"I demand from the law enforcement agencies to appropriately respond to such criminal groups. Today I will appeal to the Security Service of Ukraine, the Interior Ministry, the tax [service], to check all the operations they [the organizers of the pickets] were carrying out with counterfeit spirits," said Volodymyr Groysman.

For 4 months of activities the new leadership of SE Ukrspyrt has launched operation of 8 new plants (their total number grew from 12 to 20), the production of alcohol has increased by 1.8 times up to 944.1 thousand dal. In money terms this makes up UAH 250 million a month, which were transferred from shadow economy to the white market.

"They used to plunder from the state budget UAH 250 million monthly. Can you imagine how many hundreds of millions dollars they have got from this," urged Volodymyr Groysman.

According to him, the enterprises of SE Ukrspyrt were used "to distil counterfeit spirit, then sell it in the black market, and this brought dozens millions dollars to their pockets".

"We're not going to ignore this. We believe that each state-owned enterprise should work for the state budget while the funds that we earn to the state budget, should be directed to wages, pensions, roads, medicines and so on. All these constitute our challenge", said the Prime Minister.

The Head of Government stressed the need to ensure absolute transparency of operation of the enterprises of SE Ukrspyrt and urged the media to pay special attention to these enterprises.

"The entire society must be aware of what is the real situation," he accentuated.

The Prime Minister noted that he was open to dialog and willing to resolve problems through open discussion with the media.

"To create pressure so that someone could hide his shadow scheme – it’s not our option. This is a principled position. Each hryvnia should be directed to the budget. The one who understands that is free to work, the one who does not is our enemy. We will fight with them and we will win", stressed the Head of Government.