Avangard commented on NABU investigation
Avangard Agroholding, which was investigated by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) for two years, made a statement regarding the allegations made in the context of the case against the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) Nazar Kholodnitsky.
"For 2 years, NABU carried out pre-judicial investigation of Avangard enterprises regarding the possible illegal refund of VAT, which was formed after the commissioning in 2015 of two poultry complexes in Kherson and Khmelnytsky regions," the statement says.
The company emphasizes that the main argument of NABU detectives is that the holding companies until 01.01.2016, as producers of agricultural products, were on a special regime of VAT taxation, yet this right was granted to all Ukrainian producers of agricultural products.
"All these allegations were verified as early as in 2016-2017 in the course of investigations by the SSU and the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine on similar charges for the same period, and decisions were made to close criminal proceedings. Within 2 years, the employees of the agricultural holding facilitated the conduct of all the necessary investigative actions of the pre-trial investigation of the NABU," the statement stresses.
The company believes that all actions of NABU were aimed at "destabilizing and unbalancing" the activities of the holding's enterprises, whereas the detectives "continued illegal actions".
"Until now, we have not commented on this situation due to the fact that the company relied on the adoption of lawful decisions by anti-corruption law enforcement agencies. Repeatedly we addressed to the management of NABU and SAP about illegal actions and ignoring the implementation of the law of Ukraine by NABU detectives. We provided all the arguments regarding the inexpediency of this criminal proceeding, because these facts were investigated by the Ukrainian Security Service and the Prosecutor General's Office," the authors of the statement note.
